Cross My Heart I'm Too Young To Die
by aprill99
Summary: Cross My Heart & Hope To Spy in Zach's POV. I know it's been done before but I wanted to try. First story ever. Hope you like it!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Anything from the book belongs to Ally Carter

Chapter 1

I lined up the site on the rifle and tried to ignore the rain dripping into my eyes. I was frozen solid and soaked to the bone. Take it from me, Maine during the winter is _not _somewhere you want to be camping! Especially if you haven't slept in 47 hours 56 minutes 12 seconds and counting!

Of course I wasn't the only one out here. There were twenty other boys in my Junior class at The Blackthorne Institute for Boys. We had all been dumped out here with over forty pounds of heavy camping equipment with one objective:

**Assassinate your target and return to base**

Of course, those types of missions are a whole lot easier when you know where your target, (or even your base for that matter) is in relation to where you are. I had basically managed to map out a route back to base when we had first been dropped off, but finding my target had been another matter entirely.

I won't go into all of the gory details, but lets just say it involved nearly two days of hiking and a whole lot of mud and caffeine.

**Fun fact #1**: Dry instant coffee is vile.

I lined up the targets head in my sights. If it had been anyone else set up as the target then Dr. Steve Sanders, then maybe I would have aimed for his back. The only rule of this was that it had to be an approximation of a kill shot. We were all using paintball, but a paintball to the head would still really hurt.

As I prepared to squeeze the trigger, I had one moment of misgiving. Knocking people out isn't necessarily fun, but this guy was, like, the embodiment of pure evil. Wait, I think my mother actually has that title.

I pressed the trigger, and a moment later Dr. Steve was flat on the ground with blue paint smeared through his hair. I sighed and collapsed the gun into a tube about the size of a piece of PBC pipping. I dropped the gun into my bag and turned to leave.

I started to jog back in the general direction of where I thought the base was. I stopped abruptly when I passed a boulder. I closed my eyes momentarily. I was hungry, I was tired, and theoretically I could let whoever this other hunter was hit me with a paintball and just be picked up in the helicopter and go home. On the other hand I could also theoretically be a masochist and set up a trap for whoever this guy was.

I cursed at my own brain and disappeared into the trees around me. I doubled back silently through the pine trees to behind my would-be attacker. I launched forward knocking the boy off of his feet and pining him into the ground. My hands were around the guys throat before I could really think about what I was doing. I was so tired that my brain was running off of nothing but instinct, and unfortunately for the guy I was chocking (who also happened to be my roommate) my instincts were those of an assassin.

I blame my mother for that.

"Jesus Christ Zach! I get it! You got me." Grant chocked out.

My adrenaline rush fadded and I let Grant breath again.

"Remind me to never _ever _sneek up on you again." he said.

"I would have thought that you would know that allready considering youv'e been my roommate for five years." I told him as I examined his tactical position. "This isn't a bad spot. What was your plan? Take out the guy who finished first?"

He nodded.

I simply dropped my stuff on the ground and sat next to Grant. He had had a good plan. Assassins work annonymously and it's a very competitivie job market. If you can take out the guy who took out your target then who's to say you weren't the one to do it?

Grant studied my face. "Tired?"

I nodded.

"Want some coffee?"

"Do you have any hot water to mix it with?"

"Ummm no not exactly." He studied me again. "Just how many hours have you burned without sleeping?"

I dropped my head back against the tree. "48 hours, 26 minutes, and 11 seconds."

Grant whistled lightly. "How long do you think it'll be before they pick us up?" he asked.

"That depends on when exactly Steve wakes up and radios in."

"You hit him perfectly in the head didn't you?"I nodded. Snippers call a perfect hit to the back of the head disconnecting the computer. It's kind of the gold standard of snipping. "Jeez it's like you can't miss or something! Any way, how long do yuou think it'll be till he's up?"

That was when I heard the sound of a chopper approaching at high speed. "Aparently not that long. I guess Dr. Steves head is a little thicker than we thought."

Grant laughed and exactly 7 minutes and 4 seconds later, we were all on our way back to school.

You're all probably wondering what kind of school it is I go to. What school teaches highschoolers outdoor survival and sniping instead of algebra and history? What kind of school lies about it's very existance? What type of school teaches kids how to take lives?

Hell, you don't even know who I am. I'll tell you.

My name is Zachary Goode.

And I go to a school for spies.


	2. Chapter 2

When we arrived back at school I made my way back to my dorm and took a shower. I would have just plain crashed, but I was still soaking wet and I probably didn't smell great. I can tell you Grant didn't.

The shower was hot thank God. Once during 8th grade, the school cut all of the hot water supply just to see what we would do. I'm pretty sure the person whose idea it was regreted it. I can't really tell you if he did because he was never to be seen or heard from again after it happened.

**Fun Fact #2: If you are going to mess with a school full of boys. Don't mess with the one school where every occupant has been personally trained to be able to kill you with a paper clip.**

When I got out of the shower I pulled on my cumfy sweat pants and a T shirt and started to srumble back towards my bed. I ran into someone on the other side of the door and managed to pin them to the wall before even proccessing who it was. In approxamately 4 seconds I recognized the voice of the boy I had pinned and groaned.

"Jonas. What are you still doing up it's 1:46 in the freaking morning!" Jonas was my other roommate. He was on the reaserch track of study which meant that he didn't do the types of missions that Grant and I did. It also meant that he could hack into pretty much anything that we asked him to. I think he had a photographic memory to, but I had never asked.

"I heard you and Grant were back and wanted to check in with how everything went." I released my hand from around his throat and rubbed my eyes.

"It was fine Jonas. It's not like anything was going to actually be fatal." I muttered as I walked over to my bed and collapsed on to it. Actually knowing the teachers here, some of the obsticals certainly might have been fatal. I figured that Jonas worried enough though, and decided not to mention it.

"Actually according to my calculations a paintball fired with the momentum of-."

"Jonas! No offense, but I barely understand you when I am fully and completely conscius and right now, I'm no where near. Do you think you could wait to tell me how fatal a paint ball can be once I've slept for a couple of hours?" The door opened and I saw my way of escape. "Besides I'm sure Grant wouls love to know!"

I could practically feel Jonas's expression brighten and buried my face into my pillow. He started going on and on to Grant about angles and trajectories and momentum. It worked better than sleeping pills to put me over the edge.

Just before I slipped into sleep, Grant caught my eye and mouthed: _You are a total dead man! _

I just smirked at him and tried not to think about just how right he really was.

* * *

It was a full 4 days later before we left the school again. We just went about improving our knoweldge. I personally aced a test in physco logical manipulation (not something I am necessarily proud of), and drank a whole leader of soda in 30 seconds (Something I am extremely proud of).

It was extremely early in the morning when Dr. Steve came into the dinning hall with a mega phone and started talking. "Boys, today I have truly excellent news!"

We all rolled our eyes. To Dr. Steve a nuclear attack would have been excellent news. The only reason that i paid attention at all was because he was talking in arabic where almost every word could mean up to three things.

Right now he was either saying, "We're going on a field trip for CoveOps." or "Their snowing on a tiled trip for the co-op." I'm going with option one. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one confused though, because some of the freshmen were mouthing, _It's snowing where? _

Now he was probably saying, "Put on some civillian clothes we leave in ten minutes." the other option was just to weird to even contemplate.

We all got up and once we were out of the caffeteria Grant whispered, "What do you think we need civilian clothes for."

I just shrugged. I didn't even think we had any access to our civilian clothes anymore. They had all been confiscated on arrival. At Blackthorne all of the boys wore neon prison jump suites. Our cover for the school is a correctional facility for disturbed and violent boys. Believe me, boys came out more disturbed, violent, and highly in need of therapy than they are going _into _it.

I changed into jeans and a Tee shirt and threw on a winter coat. Grant and I met up with 7 other guys in our CoveOps class. We piled into the helicopter without asking any questions. It's how we're trained. The helicopter blades whired and thwacked through the air. I just tipped my head back and counted the seconds until we landed. I could here Grant snoring. _That guy can sleep anywhere!_

_"_Blindfolds on everybody!" Dr. Steve called. I rolled my eyes to grant and we pulled the blindfolds over our heads. I felt someone guide me out of the helicopter and into a van. It started to move and 12 minutes later the van stopped.

"Blindfolds away! Excellence! No one is to sleepy to work are you?" It was one of those highly rhetorical questions that only an idiot would try to answere. Thank God no one was that stupid. "Excellent! now today gentlemen you are going to be talling some extremely gifted young operatives. The details of each operative are in the envelopes under your seats."

I retrieved my envelope and opened it to find myselfe looking at a picture of a very pretty girl with caramel colored hair. Her features were pretty but not necessarily beutiful. Her skin was pale but not white and her eye color didn't seem to be set. She looked like she was around my age of fifteen.

I looked over at Grant and almost laughed at his expression. His eyes were plate sized and his mouth was open wide enough to swallow a whole swarm of flies. I looked at the photo in his hand. It was of a beutiful girl with dark skin, black hair, and brown eyes. She too looked to be around fifteen.

"Umm this might be a stupid question," a boy named Jake said. "But why are we following highschool girls?"

Dr. Steve beamed. "Excellent question! But these girls ar eno ordinary girls."

_Oh no. _I thought. My stomache filling with dread. _Oh Dear God for once just don't say what I think that you're about to say._

"These girls attend a school called The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women!"

_You really are pure evil aren't you? _I thought. Because my mother went to Gallagher and I watched her kill someone. I didn't know why, but this girl in the photo didn't fit that image. She seemed to small, too innocent. She didn't look like she could be a killer. In fact for some strange reason, the very thought of it was making my vision go red. The idea that this girl could be anything like my mother.

"So everyone report back here at 1800 hours, and remember have an excellent time!"

It took almost all of my self controll to stop myselfe from launching myselfe across the van and strageling him. My hands were in tight fists at my side and despite all of my training I could feel my face turning red. Grant pulled me quickly out of the van but I was still seing in red patches. Grant flicked my forhead several times.

"Zach. Zach! _Zach!"_

_"What!"_ I snapped.

"Sorry. It's just, I've never seen you lose your control like that before. It's like something in you snapped."

I took a deep breath. "Lets just go look for the girls okay? Two man tailing team."

"Fine. Sounds good. It's just-"

"I don't want to talk about it okay? I just lost it for a second it's nothing."

Grant just nodded and let the subject drop.


	3. Chapter 3

**Discalimer: Everything that was in the book belongs to Ally Carter. If I owned the characters, then a few of the scenarios in this book would have turned out way differently.**

"How are we supposed to find two girls in all of this mess?" Grant asked from his seat on the park bench beside me.

"Patience is a virtue Grant." I reminded him. Never once taking my eyes off of the street in front of us.

"We haven't even moved once!"

"That's not true. We stopped to get snacks earlier." I reminded him. we hadn't been planning it but the vending machine had been so tempting. Not to mention easy to break into. Hey! don't judge! those things should be harder to break into if they want to actually make any money.

"Why are we sitting here anyway? We're in D.C! Why don't we catch a baseball game while we're here?"

"Well at a baseball game would I have been able to find you're target?" I asked.

Grant's jaw almost hit the ground as he looked towards where the dark haired girl was pirouetting like a ballerina. I could see why. The girl was beautiful. Dark skin and curling brown hair and dark green eyes. I was more interested in the girl who she put her arm around.

When I saw her, I felt my own breath hitch momentarily. The picture didn't come anywhere close to doing her justice. Her hair and skin color were the same, but she seamed to glow gently with a sort of unidentifiable vitality. Her eyes looked like a pale clear blue.

"Who is the_ Bombshell_?" Grant asked.

"She's British," I commented.

"How can you tell?"

"Well for one thing, all of her stuff is from Harrods, and for another, if you weren't talking you would probably be able to hear the accent." I said the last bit with a smirk. Grant was a good fighter but he had yet to learn about the power of observation.

"Fine so she's a _British_ bombshell!"

"Shut up!I'm trying to read their lips!"

Grant stopped talking and fixed his eyes on their lips where mine were. We had just covered lip reading in class and I was itching to put it into practice.

"They're not puppies." The blonde was saying.

"Come on." Her friend said grabbing her hand. "Lets go talk to them. They're really cute!"

I automatically checked our reflections in the shop windows in front of me. I was thinking that there had to be someone else around but the only other people I saw where a group of women wearing sweatshirts that said "Louisville Ladies do D.C." I smirked again. Looks like they were talking about me and Grant. I looked over at Grant and saw that he was smirking too.

Unfortunately we missed what I felt was probably the crucial part of the conversation because the next thing that i heard was the British girl saying. "It's okay Cam, you don't have to pretend."

Pretend what? Okay now I was annoyed. I hated feeling like I had missed crucial parts of information. "Cam's" eyes had rolled a couple of times at her friends words and I thought I knew why. Spies _always_ had to pretend.

Grant elbowed me in the side and I cursed silently. I had spaced out momentarily and that had been all the time it had taken for both girls to disappear. "I see The British Bombshell." Grant said and I felt my heartbeat slow. I felt sure that Cam would be close by. I found it hard to believe that anyone so beautiful could disappear so completely.

We had started following Grant's girl but I still couldn't find Cam. I wondered what Cam was short for? There she was. Oh wait she was gone again. How the hell was she doing that? She had to be a pavement artist. I swore vehemently under my breath in Swahili. Grant shot me a weird look. "Pavement artist." I told him. "A good one."

He nodded and quickly scanned the crowd of faces. "Well my girl is over there," he said. "Your girl can't be far off."

"_My _girl?"

"Sure. Your following her, and besides she's a cutie."

I punched him in the gut with enough force to permanently damage a normal person but Grant barely flinched. "You didn't deny it," he pointed out.

"Can we just find her first?" that's when I found her. "There!"

She and the British girl were running towards a group of girls who wore uniforms identical to theirs from the waist up.

Grant and I both swore at that. If we lost them in that group then we would never _ever _find them again. On the bright side, they thought that their only tale was a guy in a red baseball cap following quickly behind. They lost him by neatly pretending to get on a subway train with the rest of the group.

They walked together for a while and then split up. Without saying a word Grant and I split up to follow them.

Cam walked towards the elevator and I swore silently. She would still have ample time to make her meeting if I didn't follow her. But I couldn't follow her without making my presence known. So I sped up and beat her hand to the elevator call button.

Her eyes shot daggers at me as if I had just personally offended her. I gave her a half head nod and said, "hey." In what I hoped passed for a normal way.

"Hi," she muttered and began to walk the button repeatedly. Obviously she missed the whole memo about pushing-the-button-more-times-not-making-the-elevator-come-faster. It was kinda cute actually.

The doors slid open and Cam darted inside like she was hoping that moving more quickly would stop me from following her, but of course being me, I did.

I rested back against the elevator railing and watched her studying me in the elevator mirror. Probably trying to determine weather or not I was a threat.

_Oh Gallagher Girl you have no idea how much of a threat I really am. _Out load I said, "So The Guggenheim Academy-"

"Gallagher Academy." she corrected automatically.

"Iv'e never heard of it."

She rolled her eyes as if to say, W_ell duh! Idiot! _but out loud she just said. "Well it's my school."

We lapsed back into silence. I noticed that she kept fidgeting. Shifting her weight and taping her fingers.

"You in a hurry or something?"

"Actually I'm supposed to meet my teacher at the ruby slippers exhibit. I've only got twenty minutes and if I'm late he'll kill me."

(Probably an exaggeration, but you never can tell.) I was still wondering if she had actually been stupid enough to give me both the place, and time of her meeting. Also she had just told a lie that I could easily catch.

"How do you know?"

"Because he said 'meet me at the ruby slippers exhibit.'"

I smiled at her mistake and shook my head. "No, how do you know you only have 20 minutes? You're not wearing a watch."

"My friend just told me." It was a good lie. If you didn't happen to know that her friend hadn't been wearing a watch either.

She was still fidgeting. "You fidget a lot." I informed her.

"Sorry," she said. But I could tell she really wasn't. "I have low blood sugar. I need to eat something."

Well she probably didn't have low blood sugar but it was more than likely that she needed to eat something. After all she had been walking up and down a freezing cold mall all afternoon, and I felt bad for her. That was most likely why I found myself reaching into my pocket and handing her my half eaten bag of M&M'S. "Here I ate most of them already."

She regarded the candy looking tempted, but said. "Oh..um.. that's okay. Thanks though." So she was up on the whole, don't take candy from strangers thing.

I shoved the candy back into my pocket. "Oh. Okay."

We reached the surface and she darted quickly out of the elevator calling, "Thanks for the candy!"

She was half way down the street before she realized that I was still following her. "Where are you going?" she asked spinning on the spot.

"I thought we were going to meet your teacher in the wonderful world of Oz." I said like it was the most natural thing in the world.

_"We?"_

__"Sure. I'm going with you."

"No you are not," she snapped. It probably was not a good idea for her to be bringing a boy to a clandestine rendezvous.

"Look," I said confidently. "It's dark. You're by yourself. And this is D.C." Jesus I sounded like a worried grandmother. Or an over protective boyfriend. I quickly banished that last thought. "And you've only got 15 minutes to meet your teacher." 13 and a half actually, but I figured that most guys my age would not know that.

She rolled her eyes and spun on her heel muttering, "Fine."

After a few paced of super speed walking I said. "You really can walk fast," silence. "So o you have a name?" I wasn't really expecting her to answer and in a way she didn't.

"Sure. Lots of them." I just smiled at that, because frankly that was the most honest thing she had ever told me.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Wow! Where had that question come from? i had barely knew anything about the girl!

"Look thanks for the chivalry and all, but it really isn't necessary." she told me. Neatly sidestepping my question. "It's just up here," she pointed "And there's a cop over there."

i cast him a quick glance. "What you think that guy can do a better job protecting you than I can?" Highly doubtful as I could best most marines in hand to hand combat.

Her eyes narrowed slightly and I noticed that they had changed there color again. "No, I think that if you don't leave me alone I can scream and that cop will arrest you." It was a joke, but the threat was real so i smiled and backed away.

I had to admit. it had been kind of fun playing the knight in shining armor. To bad that this particular girl would probably never need saving. "Hey," i heard her call. "Thanks anyway!" I nodded and kept walking.

I went in threw the back entrance of the museum and arrived at the ruby slippers exhibit in time to hear Joe Solomon say, "You're 4 seconds late."

"But I'm alone." she replied.

"No Ms. Morgan. You're not." I guessed that was my cue and came out from the shadows so that Cam could see me when she spun.

Then I said the four words that were almost guaranteed to drive her nuts. "Hi again, Gallagher Girl."

"Good work Zach." Mr. Solomon approved

I enjoyed the look of her face going pink for a moment before she said, "Hi Blackthorne Boy."

It was then that I did a truly stunning impersonation of a fish out of water and Mr. Solomon blinked rapidly before saying. "Very good Ms. Morgan," then he glanced at me. "But not good enough."

Cam turned on me and said, "Your mission was what? To keep us from achieving our mission?"

i cocked my head and raised an eyebrow. "Something like that," then i gave a half laugh. "I thought I could just make you lat for your meeting. I didn't think you would actually tell me where it is and walk me halfway there."\

Cam, looking vaguely nausea started to disappear into a crowd of tourists and Mr. Solomon sighed and put an arm around her shoulders to keep her from vanishing.

I thought that she had had the right idea and let myself get dragged away into a passing crowd.

**A/N**

**Reviews are better than candy! i hope you like it so far!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Ha ha. ha ha. NO**

I have had some weird experiences during my time at Blackthorne. Like, there was this one day where we recieved a bulletin saying that we were going to have to sdrawkcab gnihtyreve yas (say everything backwards). But right then I was having one of the weirdest hellicopter rides I had ever experienced.

Why don't I give you a list of the top few reasons it was weird.

1. Tom and Liam had dressed up like stockbrockers in suites they got from god knows where (actually come to think of it, he might not know either)

2. Neil was using an oxygen mask because the girl he had been fallowing had locked him into a closet on the top of the Washington Monument.

3. Charlie was dressed in a wig and one of the Tee Shirts from the lousville ladies.

4. Ayden was still passed out from being tasered by a security guy from the national park service

5. Too top it all off Dr. Steve had decreed that for the rest of the way home, the helicopter would be an english free zone so anybody talking was talking in languages like Arabic & Swahili.

That was about it.

"ثم دفعت أنا الفتاة مباشرة الى المجمع يعكس! وقالت إنها أرادت أن مثل قتل شيء." Grant said in Arabic. I had to admit knocking his tailee into the reflecting pool to make her late had been pretty ingenious but I couldn't really concentrate on his story.

I still couldn't get Cam out of my head. What did Cam stand for? How did she know about Blackthorne? That look on her face when she had said, "Hi Blackthorne Boy." How she had sidestepped my question about having a boyfriend. Weirdly enough that was the question that I most wanted answered.

I groaned and slammed my eyelids shut trying to erase the image of her face and dropped my head back against the wall. Grant looked at me "You air sick or something?" I shook my head slightly. "Just regular sick?" I shook my head again. "Well what then? Cause I gotta tell you, you look kinda like my cousin looked when he had the flu," he whispered. The helicopter was still a no english zone.

"I'm just distracted." I told him quietly. Which was probably just as bad considering.

Grant broke in to a grin. "Aha so that's it! Pretty little pavement artist got your brain?" I just wacked him half heartedly across the back of the head and didn't answer. "Zach's got a crruuuuussshh." he sang.

This time I cursed loudly in Indonesian. Dr. Steve looked at me funny but he couldn't really complain. It had been in another language. Then I punched him full force in the gut to cut of his ability for speech. Partly because I wanted him to shut up, partly because Dr. Steve could drop us off right now and make us walk the rest of the way back to Blackthorne & I really did not want to walk back to Maine.

* * *

When we landed back at Blackthorne I jumped out of the helicopter and tapped Grant lightly on the arm and gestured towards Jonas. Time to get some answeres. Once we had dragged a confused Jonas back to the dorm he of course wanted to know everything. Grant gave him the abreviated version, but Jonas being Jonas. He wanted all the gory details.

"So what did these girls look like?" Jonas asked.

Grant glanced at me. "They were freaking _Bombshells!" _

"What type of bombshell exactly?" Jonas asked.

Grant extracted his photot of the girl and passed it to Jonas. I did the same with the picture of Cam. Jonas looked from picture to picture. "Oh" he said. "That type."

I rolled my eyes. "Can we come back to the question of hotness sfter youv'e gottten access into the Gallagher Academy website?" I asked.

Jonas nodded and fired up a hacking program on his computer. "How far into the website are we going?"

"Whole 9 yards. Whatever you can get."

"Okay just give me a minute."

The key board clacked and jangled. My nerves felt frayed and I could barely stop my fingers from tapping. "Jonas," Grant said through gritted teath.

"Hold on, this place has got more security codes than the Pentagon."

"More than us?" I asked.

"No." he looked up at me. "But close."

I nodded and then the computer beeped. "We're in. Whos life story do you want to know. I need a name to make this work."

"Cam" i said.

"Last name?"

I took a moment to replay the day in my head. "Morgan, Cam Morgan."

"Well, Zachary Goode." he said like a Vegas show man. "Is this your girl?" he handed me the computer and I was looking at the file.

**Name: Cameron Anne Morgan**

**Code Name: The Chameleaon**

**Age: 15**

**Height: 5'3**

**Weight:112 lbs**

**Grade: Sophmore**

**Streangths: Pavement artestry, hand to hand combat, Converstional Swhili, Covert operations.**

**Note able accomplishments: Cracked an NSA code by accident when she was 4. Helped her father develope a Trojan horse scenario for a mission at age 8. Managed to follow one of her teachers for a full three hours undetected through the Roseville town carnival in her Sophmore year. Also during her Sophmore first semester she with the help of her roommates Rebecca, Liz, and Macey she managed to utilize her Cov-Ops training to create a relationship with a civilian boy. The relationship went for several months before the boy drove a forklift through the wall during a Cove-Ops test believing Cameron to have been Kidnapped. Josh Abrahams A.K.A The Subject. Was given memory modification tea and has no recollection of the events.**

**Mother: Rachel Morgan**

**Job: Headmistress of The Gallagher Academy, **

**For more details examine her file.**

**Father: Mathew Morgan**

**Status: MIA Presumed dead.**

**For more details see file**

I felt Jonas take the computer back and look up the girl Grnat had been tailing. I heard that she liked to be called Bex and that she was definently British. Her parents were working for MI6 and she was Cams roommate, and basically the female version of Grant. I heard all of that but not one bit of it processed. _MIA presumed dead. _Those words just kept circling around and around my head. _Mathew Morgan, MiA presumed dead. Mathew Morgan. Mathew Morgan? _Why was that name so firmiliar?

I turned and sprinted out of the room and back into it before Grant and Jonas could really process that I had left. "Wow! Have you been taking lessons from the road runner?" Grant asked.

I quickly handed Grant the picture that I had swiped off of the wall. It was a picture that I had never picked up before, because yeah, it included my dad. My dad who had gone MIA. Almost exactly 4 years ago.

Grant examined the photo. "Okay, so yo immetated the Road Runner to o get a picture of... Teenage Mr. Solomon and freinds?"

"Judging from eye shape, and other features..." Jonas said. "This guy over here, is either freakily similar to you, or Solomon was pals with your dad." He shot a look at me but I didn't answere. I never talked about my parents. Their really wasn't much I could legally tell tham anyway.

"Flip he picture."

Grant did. And on the back were the words I knew would be there. In neat, precise, cramped handwriting. **_Ulmni Joseph Solomon, Benjamin Goode, and Mathew Morgan. Graduated year of 1988._**

That was the photo I let them see. I looked at another one though. A photo of the tall man in the first photo, and a pretty women with dark brown hair and big green eyes. They were holding a tiny baby The writing on the back read in the same handwriting as the first photo: _**Mathew, Rachel, and their new daughter Cammie.**__**1992.**_

I had just found a picture of Cammie and her Parents.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Well my names isn't Ally Carter, so... No.**

I quickly slipped the other photo into my pocket. I had no problem with Jonas and Grant seeing a photo that vaguley related to my life, but I didn't quite feel comfortable with them having an insight into Cammie's. I didn't even know when I had started thinking of her as Cammie.

"Where did you get this Zach?" Grant asked.

"I saw Solomon drop it in the trash earlier and I dug it out," Grant looked at me sceptically. I just shrugged, "I wanted to know what he was so anxious to throw away."

Both things were a total lie. I had had the photos in a box hidden under a loose ceiling pannel for a long time. I had just never really wanted to look at them. I didn't want any more painful memories than I actually had to deal with. However, in this case lying was way easier than going into the story of my messed up family situation.

"How did you recognize the name Mathew Morgan?" Grant asked.

"He's on the Blackthorne ulumni list."

Grant just nodded. Jonas turned his attention back to the Gallagher website. I just sat and tried to sift through my own thoughts. I had absolutely no luck.

Eventually the intercom on the wall buzzed. I expected it to be the announcement for curfew or some freakish night drill but instead it was an announcement in Dr. Steve's voice. (Which really if you considered it was probably just as torturous.

"Are we all up? Excellent!" At that I think every single other person in the complex groan. "Now if the following students would collect all necessary personal items and meet at the van at once!" He read off the names of several people from grades eight and nine, and then, "Grant Cheshire, Jonas Woodely, Zachary Goode." he kept reading but we stopped paying attention.

Grant looked at me, "What now?" I hated it when people asked me that kind of question. It made me feel so obligated to take on a leadership position which is something I normally avoid at all costs. People had just always assumed that I would be a leader and I hated it. After what happened to my mother, I don't really trust myselfe to lead others.

"Zach," Grant repeated. "What do you want to do?"

I just shrugged, "We go I guess." So we collected our things and, ten minutes later we were climbing into a van. The other boys were passing notes wondering where we were going but I knew the minute they had us change into prep school uniforms where we were headed.

We were off to The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women.

* * *

We arrived outside of Gallagher at exactly 7:26 and 19 second in the morning.

My first thoughts upon seeing Gallagher were basically: _They have a mansion? How freeking unfair is that? Our cover story is a detention facility and they have a mansion!_

My limbs were stiff when we climbed from the car but I didn't let it show. I just hopped out and stepped inside the halls. It was _huge _and elegant. There was a lot of stone, plush decor, and museum style artifacts.

We entered the dinning hall and every single persons attention snapped straight to us. It was a bit like a cartoon to watch. The headmistress was making some big welcoming speach, but nobody was paying any attention at all. She explained that we would be attending classes with the girls, but we kind of already knew that.

There where exactly 150 girls in the hall. I already knew that from Jonas's reaserch, but I was only looking for one of them. A girl who I'm pretty sure was senator Mchenry's daughter Macey (and Cammie's roommate) spared a glance upwards from what looked to be organic chemistry flashcards. "That's them?" she asked the girl across from her. The girl nodded & a millesecond later I rwalized that she was Cammie. "Macey just shrugged "Iv'e seen cuter." and went back to her notes.

You would have thought that even if she had seen cuter we would still be more interesting than organic chemistry.

"It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Steven Sanders." Ms. Morgan said.

"Dr. Steve!." Dr. Steve announced.

"Excuse me?"

"Call me Dr. Steve," he said punching the air.

I groaned and then laughed slightly at Cammie's expression. Her eyes had changed color again and I was to busy trying to figure out the new color to process what Headmistress Morgan was saying.

"I wouldn't mind being bonded to him." A girl near Cammie muttered, pointing at me.

I just grinned a little wider and waited for Cammie to look up and meet my eyes. I just really wanted to see her expression when she saw I had shown up. I had a feeling that it would be totally priceless.

* * *

"Knock knock. Good morning ladies," exclaimed Dr. Steve as he pushed open the doors to the COW classroom. Cammie slumped lower into her chair like she wanted to hide. _Well thats to bad because I'm looking right at you Gallagher Girl._

"Can I help you Dr. Sanders?" the teacher was asking.

"I say your voice sounds so farmiliar, have we ever met before?" Dr. Steve asked. _Oh don't go there with somone who probably has eight different identity options in their back pocket. _I thought.

I stopped giving notice to the rest of the conversation until we got to introductions. "Um I'm Jonas," he said shifting from foot to foot. "I'm sixteen. I'm a sophmore-"

"Thus your enrolment in this class," Mr. Smith commented drily. "welcome Jonas please take a seat."

"Excellent job Jonas, Excellent job." I saw cammie's eyes rolling and privately agreed with her. "Now Jonas here is on the reaserch track of study. I don't suppose any of you ladies could show him around?"

"Hmmph" a tiny blonde girl who I recognized as Liz said. I'm guessing it had a lot to do with the fact that Cammie's freind Bex had just kicked her in the back.

Dr. Steve just said "Excellent!" again. I thought he might want to look up the exact meening of that word. "Jonas you can spend the day with Ms..."

"Sutton," the girl said. "Liz Sutton."

"Excellent! Now Grant if you would."

"I'm Grant," Grant said sliding into the seat next to Bex.

I didn't wait for Dr. Steve. I just walked to the back of the class and slipped into the seat next to Cammie and behind Grant. "I'm Zach'," I grinned at Gallagher Girl's expression of pain. "And I think Iv'e found my guide."

If looks could kill Cammie would have fryed me. "Excellent!" I heard Dr. Steve say. I dropped my arm across the back of Cammie's chair. For once I had to actually agree with him.

**A/N: Reviews are better than Candy. Especially since asking for candy from strangers would be freeky.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: Well unless I have got my whole life all wrong then no, I am not Ally Carter.**

"So we meet again," okay, so it wasn't the best line to say to someone who might possibly hate me, but I felt wierdly like the part of my brain that normally checked and approved things before they came out of my mouth had been temperarily turned off.

"So this is the famous Gallagher Academy." at this point I was just trying to see if I could get her to talk.

"Yes," Cammie said. " This is the second floor corridod. Most of our classes are down this hall." she said. Gesturing like a detached tour guide.

Now I was fully aware that I was not a warm and fuzzy person. In fact over half of the people I have met in my life would probably like to kill me. However, in this case I had to wonder what exactly I had done to make her hate me this much. Not that I cared, because I didn't. _Yeah right. _one part of my brain said. _Shut up! _The other half said.

Great. Because having the two different sides of my brain argue wasn't a sign of impending schitzaphrenia or multiple personality disorder or anything.

"And your the famous Cammie Morgan," I said. I was just trying to see how she would react to the compliment.

It turned out that how she reacted was to turn a delicate, rosy, pink and mumble. "Come on. Culture and Assimilation is on the fourth floor."

"Wow," I said with a hold everything gesture. "Did you just say you're taking me to culture class?" I couldn't help the smug smile appearing on my face.

"Yeah."

_Culture? Really? Where the classes on how to kill people with pencils? Where were the classes on absailing over cliffs? _"Boy, when they said you had the toughest curriculum in the world they mean it." I muttered sarcastically.

Cammie started walking as she told me. "Culture and Assimilation has been a part of the Gallagher curriculum for more than a hundred years Zach. A Gallagher girl can blend into any culture, any enviornment. _No wonder she likes it then. _I thought. _After all she is the Chamealean_ "Assimilation isn't a matter of social graces." She stopped at the doorway and looked up at me. "It's a matter of life and death."

She had made a good point. Blending in was important. In fact I might have just clammed my mouth shut and conceeded the victory if her teacher hadn't chosen that exact moment to announce, "Today ladies and gentelman, we will be studying the art of...the dance!"

If I had been a normal person I would have busted out laughing. Instead I just leaned down so I could put my lips near Cammies ear and whisper, "Yeah, Life and death."

* * *

The class room looked less like a class room and more like a miny ball room in my opinion. Satin and velvet and plush stuff everywhere. The teacher fit perfectly with the room. Complete with monagramed hankerchief. I gathered that this was Madame Dabney.

She said, "I have been saving this very special class for the arrival of our very special guests."

"Did you hear that?" I whispered. "I'm special." I said it like a toddler to try and see if I could get Cammie to the point where I could hear her BPM rising.

"Thats a matter of-" she started but was cut off by Madame Dabney.

"Oh Cameron Dear, would you and your freind like to demonstrate for the rest of the class?" It was like she had heard my thoughts on trying to stress Cammie out further and decided to help. She pulled us into the cemter of the room.

"You must be Zachary Goode." she said. I was a little bothered that she had already known my name, I like to stay off the grid, but I didn't show it. "Welcome to the Gallagher Academy. Now, I must ask you to place your right hand firnly in the center of Cameron's lower back."

I complied willingly on that one. Cammie looked like she would like nothing more than to disapear completely, but I just held her a little bit more tightly around the waist. It has to be kind of hard to disapear when the person you're trying to hid from has an arm around you.

"Okay now everyone find a partner. Yes girls some of you will have to take turns being the boy." Madame Dabney instructed.

I saw Liz and Jonas simaltainiously trample eachothers feet. Bex could run a dating service f the spy thing doesn't work out. I just stood still and tried not to think about Cammie at all. Not about how she fit perfectly inside my arms like she had always been meant to be there. Not how her hair smelled like strawberries. Not how warm and soft her hand was when Madame Dabney instructed her to put it in mine. Not the wierd tingly feeling in my fingers. None of it. Needless to say, I failed miserably.

I let my eyes fall to her face to see that she was pointedly looking anywhere else but me. Then a thought accured to me. "Whats the matter Gallagher Girl? You're not actually mad about yestrday are you?"

Cammie didn't answere and she didn't looked away from me either. I was very slowly counting her pulse from where her hand was in mine and I felt it speed up. At least the mystery behind why she didn't like me was solved.

The music in the room got louder and I heard Madame Dabney say, "Now ladies and Gentelmen we will begin with a basic box step." That was easy. I already knew how to dance. **Don't ask. It's a story that no living soul will ever hear!** "No Rebecca, if you are going to dance with Grant then you must let him lead!" Naturally Grant had partnered with Bex.

I was still looking at Cammie. "It was a cover Gallagher Girl. An op. Maybe you're familiar with the concept?" Okay so sarcasm was probably not my best move. Jonas had told me that sarcasm was my default mode. He was wrong. My default mode is silence. Sarcasm is my mode when silence is not an option, and in this case I didn't feel like it was.

Before Cammie could say anything, Madame Dabney had approached. She placed one hand on me and one on Cammie and pushed us together saying "Hold You're partner tightly.

_Yeah, because eliminating space between the two of us is doing absolute wonders for my clarity of thought. _I thought. Then before I couldthink again, Cammie and I were dancing.

**A/N: Thank you all so much for all of the positive feedback! I wasn't sure how I was doing because I'm a girl so it's wierd to write in a guys POV. Next chapter is the town scene. I hope you'll like it. Reviews are amazingness. **


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Really am not Ally Carter.**

**Fun Fact #3: **Spies tell rumors. Girls tell rumors. But no rumors are quie as wierd as spy/girl rumors.

Here is a list of just a few of them.

1. Dr. Steve broke Madame Dabneys heart in a bitter love triangle with a Pakistani belly dancer. (Rumor)

2. One of the girls helped her parents take down a terrorist girl over break. (Confirmed since Bex gave Grant a first person account of what happened.)

3. Joe Solomon once strangled someone with a pair of tights. (Seriously who comes up with this stuff?)

4. One of us boys was the son of a terrorist who is being groamed by the CIA as a double agent. (closer than what would be comfortable to my life situation)

5. Every year some of the boys from town tried to sneak into the school to prank the girls. (I sure as hell hope that no one is actually that stupid but you never know.)

On a morning about two weeks after we arrived Mr. Solomon cornered me next to the waffle bar. _I know. Can life get anymore unfair? Why did they get the waffle bar? _I went on gaurd as soon as he approached. Maybe he was freinds with my dad, but he could still probably kill me with anything in about twenty foot radius. Also, I look a lot like my dad. Why did Solomon never bring it up?

"How are you liking Gallagher so far?" he asked. "It must be a big change from Blackthorne."

"Well, you would probably know that even better than me wouldn't you?" I replied. A good way to avoid answering questions is to ask your own.

Solomon smiled. "Yes, Gallagher definently has it's perks." he gestured to my plate which I had piled high with waffles. Hey we would only be there for one semester. Might as well enjoy it while it's there. "You never get such a good breakfast at Blackthorne." He was only half looking at me, his other eye was focused on... _Headmistress Morgan? _

I broke in to a slight grin. Looked liked someone had a crush. Can adults have crushes? Whatever.

"Has Cammie been a good tour guide?" I didn't miss the fact that he called her Cammie instead of Cameron like the other teachers did.

I smiled slightly, "Actually she seems to be making a pointed effort to ignore me."

We both looked towards Cammie in time to see her nearly choke on her breakfast in response to something that the girl accross from her had said. I think the girl was Tina. She looked into the juice picture and must have seen me studying her in the metal. She leaned accross the table and whisered something that made Tina smile.

"Did you get what they just said?" Solomon asked.

I smiled a little. I think I had gotten the conversation but my lip reading was a litle rusty. I shook my head.

"Do you want to know the exact details?"

"I think I got the point."

"Well, if you are going to call dibs you had better do it soon before someone else does."

Now it was my turn to choke on breakfast as Mr. Solomon grinned and walked out of the hall.

* * *

"I say Mr. Solomon," said Dr. Steve. "You've done an excellent job with these young ladies just excellent." What I would not have given to see Mr. Solomon give a practical demonstration to go along with his lecture on how to throw people from moving vehicles. Unfortunately, Dr. Steve was driving.

"You ladies need to pay attention to this man he's a living legend." Dr. Steve continued.

"As long as they remember that the most important part of that living is the living." How right he was. "Today is about the basics ladies and gentelman. I want to see you move; see you work attention to your surroundings and remember that half of your success in this buisness is looking like you belong. Today your cover id that you're a bunch of private school kids enjoying a trip into town." Solomon explained.

Bex asked, "What are we really?" That is always good to know. It's kind of hard to carry out a mission if you don't actually know what the mision_ is_.

_"_A bunch of spies," Mr. Solomon said flipping a coin over in his hand. "Playing tag. Brush pass Ms. Baxter, define it."

Bex didn't miss a single beat. "The art of covertly passing an object between to agents."

"Correct."

I tried to look like I was paying attention to the rest of what Solomon was saying, but I was slightly distracted by the feeling of Cammie's eyes studying me.

Mr. Solomon pulled a box of miny coms untis desguised as necklaces and pins. "Watch. Listen. Remember to communicate. Observe." he said.

We all took out coms and Grant helped a girl pin on a com in the shape of the American flag. The girl swooned slightly and I barely stopped myselfe from laughing at the look on Bex's face. Grant had better decide on a girl soon or their was going to be trouble.

"Pair off. Blend in. and remember that we'll be watching." Mr. Solomon finished.

Cammie looked at Bex and headed for the door but Mr. Solomon stopped her saying, "Oh no Ms. Morgan. I believe you already have a partner." He was looking write at me.

If looks had the power to kill then Solomon would have dropped dead on the spot.

* * *

So thats how I wound up walking along next to Cammie through the picturesque streets of Roseville with cold wind attacking my face and bare hands. No gloves make it easier to pass things successfully. I looked at Cammie to see her shivering slightly. Can't say I blame her, the girl is tiny.

"Come on Gallagher Girl. This should be fun." I started walking towards the town square hoping that walking would warm Cammie up. I headed for a small gazebo in the middle of the square and sprawled casually on the steps.

I saw Cammie's now light gray eyes flickering lightly around the square. Her eyes looked a little bit sad. "So, come here often?" Then I saw the window near by. Abrahams and Son Pharmacy. Oh thats why Cammie looked a little like someone had just poured lemon juice onto a paper cut.

"I used to, but then the deputy director of the CIA made me promise to stop." I laughed lightly, she was actually telling the truth.

Cammie was watching the other girls pass the quarter and I took the opportunity to note things about the square so I could answere the questions Mr. Solomon was asking through the coms. Then I closed my eyes to try and enjoy the sunlight.

Eventually Cammie asked. "So what about you? Where does Blackthorne call home?"

"Oh," I raised an eyebrow. "Thats classified."

"So you can sleep inside the walls of my school but I can't even know where your's is?"

I laughed but there was absolutely nothig funny about it. I didn't want to picture Cammie at Blackthorne. She looked so tiny. I never ever wanted to have to picture Cammie learning the kind of things I learned at Blackthorne. I didn't want to see the look of horror on her face when she saw what we were trained to do. I prefered Cammie looking at me in annoyance because I wouldn't tell her something.

"Trust me Gallgher Girl, you wouldn't want to sleep in my school." I had hoped I could leave it there, but apparently not.

"What do you mean? Why can't you tell me?" Cammie was like me in that way, she couldn't stand not knowing.

"Just trust me Gallagher Girl." I straightened up and looked at her. Could she trust me? Did I want her to? _Yes you do. _The more annoying half of my brain answered. "Can you trust me?" The question just flew out without my control. Cammie seamed to have that effect on me.

I kept my gaze on hers as Solomon ratteled off questions and the cogs turned in Cammie's mind.

"Their was an ATM behind you Ms. Alvarez. ATM's equal cameras. Tighten it up ladies."

"Solomon's good." I commented.

"Yeah he is." She said in a toan that suggested it was stupid of me to have said.

"They say you're good too." Again, it just sort of slipped out.

Cammie looked like she could have been knosked over by a drifting feather, and Solomon asked. "Okay Zach, without turning around tell me how many windows overlook the square from the west side."

"Fourteen." I replied. I could also tell him that th third one from the left on the top row was the ideal place for a sniper, but decided to leave it out.

My eyes never left Cammie's. "They say you're a real pavement artist." They being the people who had made her file. I leaned back against the step again. "You know it's probably a good thing we got to tail you in D.C. If you'd following me I probably never would have seen you. That had been a purposeful compliment.

**Fun Fact #4: **I should leave the compliments to the part of my brain that doesn't process things because Cammie looked proud for a moment before her face fell and she turned and walked away.

Bex passed Cammie the quarter and I took a moment to deliberate before following her.

"Cammie are you okay?" said a voice I was unfarmiliar with.

Silence from Cammie and then, "Hi Josh." Well that explained the akward.

I looked at the boys reflection in the window and tried to avoid thinking about how I had been itching to punch a real person for the last few days. It took me a moment to control the compulsion and when I could process again Cammie was in the process of being hugged by a girl with blonde hair and pink mittens.

"Hi DeeDee." Cammie forced. "It's really good to see you too." Well that was a lie. I could see the way Josh and DeeDee stood together and new they were dating. I could tell by the look on Cammie's face that she knew it too.

"Okay Ms. Morgan lets see your hand off." _Too who! _

I sighed and introduced myselfe to the situation. Hey if it would make the girl in pink be quite and do something to help the petrified look on Cammie's face then I could take a little akward. "Cammie there you are." I called. I stopped infront of her and held out my hand to Josh. "I'm Zach." The look on his face made me wish I had brought my camera.

"Zach," Cammie said. "This is DeeDee and josh. There-" She broke off.

"We're freinds of Cammie's." DeeDee said.

"Zach and I-" Cammie tried. I'm pretty sure at this point she was running on autopilot.

"I go to school with Cammie." I supplied. Then thought, _what the hell? _And slipped my hand into hers. I light tingly sensation ran up my fingers.

"Really, I thought it was a girls school?" Pink girl said.

"Actually my school is doing an exchange with Gallagher this semester." I lied easily. She didn't doubt me, she had no reason to. Then I tipped our hands back lightly and felt the quarter drop into my palm.

The akward of this situation couldn't have been higher if I had actually put my arm around Cammie and kissed her. _Not an awful concept. _Muttered the half of my brain that at this point, I had decided wa probably the half the represent hormones. _Shut up! _the other half said. I neeaded to do some reaserch on the exact symptoms associated with MPD.

They should really develope a protocal for these situations. What do you do when you've just introduced yourselfe as the new boyfreind of that persons exgirlfreind i the presence of his new girlfreind? Oh and to top it all of you were only pretending and the fact that pretending sort of hurt. I'll tell you what I did. I left the scenario in the most efficent way possible.

"Cam," i said. It was the first time I had said her name out loud and I liked the way it rolled off my tounge. "the van's lleaving in ten." Then I sort of akwardly half hugged her. At least it was akward because I was only guessing as to what to do. It actually felt nice. Then I walked back to the van.

**A/N: What did you think? I know the hug thing didn't happen but thats how I always pictured it. Reviews are love!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: Ha ha! Ha Ha! No.** **I'm not Ally Carter.**

When I got back to the van I pulled the coms unit out of my ear. That would be embarrassing for Gallagher Girl later. She had just met her ex boyfriend with his new girlfriend. I mean, that had to have been hard, but to top it all off the scenario had been broadcast for her entire class plus two teachers. _Eeesh._

I watched Cammie when she climbed into the van. She looked a little shell-shocked but she was trying to put on a brave face.

Grant was watching me with a wierd expression on his face. I had no clue what I was going to tell him later, because he would ask questions. Afterall, the position I had put myself in during that scenario would defiantly raise eyebrows. At least with anyone who knew me well. I don't generally step into situations that require bringing attention to myself unless I seriously have to. I prefer too be invisible.

Sure enough as soon as we entered the school grant locked my arm in his grip, grabbed Jonas by the collar, and started dragging us towards the dorm. Jonas complained but didn't struggle.

**Fun fact #5: **Once Grant has a hand around your neck, you stop struggling

I was probably one of the few people who could have fought him off but I figured that it really wasn't worth it because I would have to go back to the dorm room eventually and I knew that Grant was perfectly capable of lying in wait for me to ask me questions when I was least expecting it. At least now I was totally awake and able to lie effectively if it became a requirement.

Once Grant had locked the door he turned to me. "Okay explain."

"Ummm... explain what?" Jonas asked.

"Exactly what happened today in town." Grant said.

"Nothing happened. I bailed Cammie out of a situation. I got the quarter. Mr. Solomon said it was time to go home."

Grant looked incredulous. "You walked into a dicey situation just like that?"

I shrugged. "It was the easiest way to get the quarter."

"Uhu right."

Jonas raised his hand. "Yes?" Grant asked.

"Why am I here?" he asked.

"I wanted someone to analyze behavior."

"Oh, okay."

"Their is nothing to analyze!" I could tell they weren't buying it so I threw out some more details. "Remember the guy in Cammie's file? Jimmy or something?"

"Josh." Jonas corrected. _Photographic memory strikes again _

"Whatever, Cammie ran into him again in town."

"Ouch." Grant grimaced. "I can practically feel the akward of that situation and I wasn't there."

"Yeah, and that was _before _his new girlfreind showed up." Both Grant and Jonas recoiled.

"So I thought I could help her out." I finished.

"Was the dude nice?" Jonas questioned.

I thought for a moment. "Actually he was kind of rude."

"You should have punched him." Grant commented off handedly.

" From the look on his face when I showed up and took Cammie's hand to get the quarter you would have thought I had punched him."

The dinner bell rang.

Grant stood up. "Okay, let's go to dinner."

I smirked slightly. "Done with giving me the third degree?"

"For now."

I rolled my eyes and left for dinner.

* * *

I watched Cammie during dinner. It looked like all she wanted in the entire world was to vanish. _Someone must have told her about the coms. _I thought. She barely finished eating desert before leaving.

**Fun Fact #6: **Gallaghers chefs make a good Creme Brulee.

Any way I left shortly after Cammie did. I followed her like a shadow. Not making a sound until she stopped infront of a large tapestry of the Gallgher family tree. She was staring at it lost in thought until I decided to jolt her.

"You know, I don't think I ever got the rest of my tour." she jumped like someone had just given her an electric shock, and stared at me. " So what do you say Gallgher girl? Is this when I get my Cammie Morgan no-passage-too-secret-no-wall-too-high tour?"

"How do you know about..." I had combed her file over the past few days and knew a lot about her now.

I decided to go with a more cryptic answere, "Spy." I said pointing at myself.

No answere. "So that was Jimmy?"

"Josh," she corrected.

"Whatever," I waved off the detail. I would never call that guy by his real name. I already knew that instinctively. "He's a cutie." Fun to tease.

Cammie sighed. "What do you want Zach?" she spread her hands. "If you came to make fun go ahead. Mock away."

I didn't want to though. Not when she looked so tired and breakable. Actually my first instinct at this point was more along the lines of giving her a hug. "Gee, you know I would... but you just took all the fun out of it."

"Sorry," she said distractedly.

Cammie took a step to leave but I blocked her path. Suddenly we were standing close together in the dark. I asked her the question that had been weighing on my mind all afternoon. "Hey, why'd you freeze out there today?"

Cammie stopped and studied me. She was seeing a different side of me she wasn't used to. Heck I wasn't sure which side of my this was. It wasn't a part that I had ever had contact with before. The sides I knew were mostly sarcastic, hard, deadly, cold, criptic, and teasing. My other side only made appearences when I was sleeping. The side of me that was noticing how pretty Cammie was, how my whole body had tingled when I held her hand, how she really looked like she could use a hug; was a side of me that was hither too unheard of.

"I'm fine." Cammie answered. "I'm over it."

Then she walked away and I murmurred. "No you aren't Gallgher Girl. But you will be."

The first part of that was a statement. The second part, was a promise.

**A/N: What do you think? Good? Bad? The word of Satan? Let me know! Reviews are love!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: Do you think I would be doing this if I was Ally Carter? **

The next morning in Culture & Assimilation Cammie seemed jumpy. Whenever there was a loud noise Cammie reacted. She didn't jump exactly, spies, like assasins, don't jump. She more like twitched.

"What's the matter Gallgher Girl?" I asked appearing behind her and making her jump again. "You seem... jumpy."

Cammie's eyes flicked over to Bex of their own accord. I wondered what they had been talking anout?

**Fun Fact #6: **Eyes have a life of their own. Where someone is looking is always an indicator of what they're thinking.

When Madame Dabney entered the room, I knew something big was about to happen. Dabney practically oozed excitement. Cammie seemed to know that something was coming because she sank lower into her apholstered chair.

"The all-school exam..." Okay, where was this going? "Ooh ladies," I waited about three seconds before she remembered to add, "and gentelman." _There you go_. "In all my years of teaching at this fine institution, I have never had the opportunity to organize such an exciting educational experience."

_Since when did the words 'exam' and, 'exciting educational experience' go into the same dialougue? _I wondered.

The worlds most dangerous high schoolers began snapping to attention all over the room while Madame Dabney finished explaining.

"This Friday evening, all students in grade eight through tweleve will be invited to a formal examination." _Could you get to the part where this is in anyway exciting?"_

"A ball ladies and gentelman! There's going to be a ball! Tommorow during this time you will be fitted for gowns and tuxedos." That explained why Cammie was cowering behind her desk like someone was standing over her with the sword of Damacles. Balls with fancy gowns aren't really the perfect places for Chamealeaons.

Madame Dabney continued explaining about the exam and I toaned out. I wondered what I might look like in a tuxedo. They weren't items of clothing i generally had the opportunity to wear. I guessed I would find out.

* * *

"Are you sure I dont look like a penguin?" Jonas asked.

"For the seventh time, no, you do not look like a penguin." I assured him.

"Hello lesser mortals. I have arrived." Grant said as he entered the room from the bathroom. He was wearing a tuxedo and was doing his best impersonation of James Bond. If his ego had been a balloon, I would have popped it with a safety pin.

I looked absolutely nothing like myselfe. Which, at this point I was actually fairly used to. The tuxedo fit fine, but it wasn't exactly a comfort garment. It was very inconvenient for stashing weapons.

We made our way down stairs to an extremely fancy test and tried to prepare for whatever might be coming. Motzart was being played by a live orchestra. Waiters were winding through the room with trays.

Then the girls came in & suddenly the whole place was filled with the sound of chating and the shine of satin.

I found Cammie & her freinds being herded together so that Madame Dabney could take a picture of them with a jeweled broach on her shawl. They all smiled. They all looked beautiful in their own ways. Liz looked like a cotton candy fairy, Macey looked like a super model, and Grant might just pass out when he saw Bex.

I heard the sound of the hall doors opening and looked over to see some guys from the maintenance department entering in tuxedos. Good thing to. Without them there would have only been the fifteen of us guys, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Moscowitz, and Dr. Steve.

I stepped up behind Cammie and took in her entire outfitt. From the hairdoo that was clearly made by Macey, over the red strapless dress that was most likely the reason for Cammie's look of dread the other day, to the shoes that looked like the type of torture that should have been outlawed by The Genieva Convention.

"Well," I said. "You don't look hideus.

**Fun Fact #8: **I make a lot of understatements.

Cammie looked me over quickly, "Ditto."

Well, that had been, nice? I'd complimented her, (Kind of). She had complimented me back, (I think.) Why couldn't there be a course on how to understand girl language? Maybe Jonas could come up with something.

Then Cammie nearly tripped over the hem of her dress. I caught her on a reflex and said, "Easy Gallgher Girl."

She pulled her arm away immediately. "I am perfectly capable of walking down the stairs by myself." She was also probably capable of throwing me down those stairs just as easily. Then Madame Dabney drifted by like a moth. "A lady always gracefully accepts a gentelmans arm when offered Cammie dear."

Cammie grited her teath but allowed me to help her down the stairs. I felt tingles run up my arm from where I was holding her, and the place was set up so beutifully. i couldn't help but smile.

"Stop that!"

"What?" i asked innocently.

"You're enjoying this way to much. You're smirking." She informed me.

I guided her towards the great hall. "iv'e got news for you Gallgher Girl, if you're not enjoying this you're in the wrong buisness."

She stayed silent and then I saw Mr. Solomon enter with a large pile of files. "Hello ladies and gentelman. You all look very nice, but I'm afraid you aren't quite finished getting ready.

**Fun Fact #9: **Never say that to a group of girls who could kill you.

"I'm afraid we didn't mention that tonight is something of a masquerade ball." _Now you tell us. _I thought.

"But we haven't got masks or disguises or-" A girl named Courtney panicked.

"These are your disguises Ms. Bauer." he held the files. "Cover legends ladies and gentelmen. You have three minutes to memorize every peice of information within them." Liz's hand hit the air. "Even if you are not on the CoveOps track Ms. Sutton. Spies are the ultimate actors. It's the heart of what we do. So tonight your mission is simple, become someone else.

I do that a lot.

Solomon was explaining about the exam but I was already memorizing my cover legend. Jacob Ramanov. Charming international art theif. I smiled a little. This would be fun.

* * *

A few hours later I had danced with nearly everyone. Even Cammie's mother. (To whom I had spoken fluent French.) Cammie was slowly disapearing into the crowd until Mr. Moscowitz cornered her and she couldn't really escape. (Mr. Moscowitz was playing her boss.)

I swooped in to rescue her.

"So Ms. St. James are you enjoying the party."

"Tiffany is the life of the party." I chimed in.

"Excuse me Mr. Secretary," I said. Offering him one of the glasses I had picked up for juat this purpose. "But I believe this is your drink."

"Oh yes!" he exclaimed. Then he leaned in to Cammie and whispered, "it is my drink isn't it?"

"Yes" she assured him.

"Thank you my good man! Good show!" How had the under secretary spontaneusly become British? I had no clue.

I watched Cammie out of the corner of my eye. She looked like she was thinking about something. She was watching her mother and she seemed a little worried.

"Isn't that right Tiffany?" Mr. Moscowitz said.

But Cammie hadn't heard him and I decided to rescue her again. Besides, I might as well get one good dance in with Cammie. "I wonder Mr. Secretary, would you mind if I borrowed Tiffany for a moment?"

Mr. Moscowitz was saying something but I was already pulling Cammie away. "They're playing our song." I said as I dropped my drink on a passing tray.

When we reached the dance floor I turned and placed my hand around Cammie's small back and took her hand. In her heels her eyes lined up to around my neck. She placed her other hand on my shoulder and we started to dance.

"So tell me Tiffany St. James, what does a girl like you do for fun?" Might as well test out her cover legend.

"I didn't tell you my name was Tiffany St. James." she said in mock suprise. "How did you know?" She was trying to catch me in a bad situation but I just played the cover I.D.

"Oh, I always make sure to know the names of, " I held her a little tighter. "beutiful women. I dipped her and winked. "Come on Gallagher Girl." I said spinning her out and back in again. "Relax a little."

I saw Madame Dabney making notes on her clipboard. I wouldn't be losing points for my dancing that was for sure.

Cammie looked slightly panicked by something and and started to slip away. Madame Dabney stopped her and she made a more proper excuse before exciting. What had I done?

**Fun Fact #10: **Girls are weird.

I slipped out of the hall after her and went straight towards the Gallagher family tree. Sure enough, she arrived seconds later while I leaned against the wall. "hey Gallagher Girl, I thought i'd find you here.

"What are you doing here." she hissed.

"Looking for you."

"Why?" That should have been a bit more obvious.

"Because this is were you came the other day."

"Oh."

"I thought this might be were you came when your upset." it wasn't a bad bet. In fact it was probably true. I wanted to know why she was so upset. Then go kick whatever it was is ass. I couldn't really do that if I didn't know what ass i was kicking. All I knew was that I suddenly couldn't stand the idea of her being upset. I felt really wierdly protective.

"So what is it Gallagher Girl?"

But she didn't get to answere because suddenly the lights flashe out and a metallic voice BLACK! CODE BLACK

Well that made the night more interesting.

**A/n: Tell me what you think! Review are amazing!**


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: If I owned these books then I wouldn't have written this.

What happens when their's a Code Black at Blackthorne? Everyone grabs the nearest object that could be used as a deadly weapon and finds a tacticle position and lie in wait for the intruder to appear. What happens during a Code Black at Gallagher? All the lights go out, every object that could identify the school slid in to the walls, and steel panes slid over the windows.

Cammie grabbed my hand and started running down the hallway as fast as she could in the torture devices she called shoes. When we past the recycling bins at the end of the hall they burst into flames to burn any classified materials. A series of lanterns lit themselves as we ran.

"I thought those were for decoration," I yelled over the sirens. Looking back on it , that had probably been stupid of me. We were in a spy school. Nothing was just for decoration.

"If everything goes right they are."

"So this means.."

"Something is seriously not right." She finished.

Formally dressed people from the maintenance department ran past but didn't say anything to us. Fine by me. Being ignorable is kind of my strong suite.

"It's security protocol." She shouted to me. "There must have been a breach. The whole system goes into lockdown nothing gets in."

As if to prove her point, steel bars snapped into place over the entrance to the hall we had just come through.

"And nothing gets out." Well that wasn't grim or anything. If this was a spy movie then that would have been the moment where the ominous music played.

The entire room was rotating like a kaleidoscope and it was making me a little dizzy to watch. "Does this happen a lot?" probably a dumb question, but security breaches aren't so scary if they're common.

"No." Okay scratch earlier. This is when the ominous music would play in a movie.

We reached the foyer and when I saw the incoming crowd of teachers I decided that it was time to do the one and only thing that I was unfailingly good at. I disappeared.

* * *

"So lets just have this straight. You didn't kiss Cammie and you didn't cause the humongous security breach?" Grant asked.

"For the twelfth time since I gave you the run down of tonight's events, no I did not kiss Cammie or cause the security breach." I told him

"Not even just a bit of it?"

"NO! GRANT!"

"Okay okay. You know for a guy wo survived training to deal with Japanese water torture you really can not take a joke."

"Psychologically speaking the part of the brain that controls pain responses is in no way related to the part of the brain that controls our sense of humor." Jonas said.

Grant and I just stared at him like he had spoken, Greek? No, I speak Greek. Korean? Nope, speak that too... Jesus it's hard to use that comparison when you speak fourteen languages. Ummm... how about Coptic? I don't think I ever learned how to speak that. Okay so we stared at him like he had just spoken Coptic.

"Jonas" Grant asked. "Do I want to know what that means in english?"

He considered for a moment. "No. You can ignore me."

Grant nodded. "Ignoring." And flopped down onto the bed.

I rolled my eyes and was headed towards the bathroom to brush my teeth when I noticed the shadows beyond the door. "Jonas." I said in my best we-might-be-about-to-be-in-a-really-bad-situation-but-lets-just-pretend-everything-is-fine voice. "Go into the bathroom and shut the door." Recognizing the toan, Jonas went without asking and Grant grabbed the combat Knife he had stashed under his pillow. I took hold of the knife I had in my waist band and counted silently to Grant and then ripped the door open.

I stopped before stabbing the person to death when I realized that it was Mr. Solomon. I'm not entirely sure, but brutally and fatally stabbing your teacher with an army issue combat knife could not be something the school approved of.

Mr. Solomon didn't look at all fazed by the fact that he had nearly been stabbed to death by two teenagers in their pajamas. Instead he just said, "Hello boys. Grant, Jonas, would you mind if I borrowed Zach for a moment?"

Grant looked too confused to say anything and Jonas had only just come out of the bathroom so their was nothing to do other than sigh and slip into the newly illuminated hall with Mr. Solomon.

Once we had reached a spot a little way down the hall he turned. I knew instinctively to close down my face and freeze my emmotions into a cube. "Good Zach." Mr. Solomon nodded in approval. "Keep your face blank. Number one rule of resisting interrogation. As you have guessed I do have a few questions as to what happened during the code black. Cammie said you were with her, is that true?"

I kept my face completely blank as I said. "No, I vacate the hall with everyone else."

Solomon smiled slightly, "You're lying."

It was a plain statement. No accusation really. Just a fact. But there was no way he could have known. I lie to people the way I breath. It's second nature. My eyebrow perked up slightly in a silent question.

"Your voice can become a little to monotone, and you almost smile, like a kid who's pulled something over on his parents. Your father did the same thing. You were very convincing though, if I hadn't suspected you would have the same tick as your dad I never would have known. Coming from me that is praise of the highest order."

I didn't bother denying it. My brain was still too busy spinning around how well he would have had to know my dad to pick up on that.

"So you were with her. Why did you disappear without answering questions?"

"I thought that it might be a little awkward if I walked out of a dark hall way with a girl. Am I correct?"

"Not so awkward. But I hope you don't mind me asking why you left the test in the first place."

I let my face go completely stony.

Solomon smiled a little wider. "I'm asking as someone who cares about Cammie and the security of the school. If you can give me a way to clear you both from the suspect list it would be a ig relief. Why did you follow her out?"

"I was dancing with her and she saw something when she was looking at her mom and it upset her. I thought maybe I could help so i went to where I found her last time she was upset."

"That tapestry of the Gallagher family tree?"

I nodded. "I thought maybe if she told me what was upsetting her. I could deal with it." I looked down and contemplated the tiles beneath my toes while I waited for Solomon to say something.

"You care about her." he said softly. Again it was a statement. Nothing that could be argued with, so I didn't try. Solomon surprised me by grinning "It's fine Zach. But as the only semi paternal presence that is sort of in Cammie's life I feel the need to tell you that if you hurt her I am perfectly capable of having you sent off to Siberia never to be seen or heard from again."

I smirked slightly. "What happened to just promising to kick my ass."

"I felt like Siberia was more of a threat."

I nodded. Solomon was starting to walk away when I asked. "How did you know?"

"What that you care about Cammie? It's the same way Mathew looked at Rachel when he started caring about her. The way your father looked at your mother."

Then he turned back down the hall. "Unfortunately, your mother didn't exactly turn out the way mothers are upposed to."

Then he left. And I knew. I knew that Solomon knew exactly who my mother is. And I can truly say that that terrified me like nothing else in the world.

A/N: Hi! Tell me how it was! I based most of this off of Cammie telling Solomon and her mom to talk to Zach. Reviews are rainbows!


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: Still not Ally Carter**

Here is something you need to know about school, news travels fast. Here is something to know about spies, they will find out everything. Here is something you need to know about spy school, everyone will know everything about anything that has ever happened inside the school walls. It kind of sucks when you think about it.

**Exhibit A: **The next moment when we walked into the hall, all of the girls automatically changed the subject. I had heard enough though, they had been talking about the Code Black and Cammie.

I sat with Grant while we ate breakfast discussing the pros and cons of large visible weapons, versus small concealed weapons. I was in for the small concealed side of things, but Grant, never one for subtlety was all for the huge and obvious side.

I was mostly focused on the debate, but being the spy I was, I was also keeping tabs on all of the other conversations around me. I didn't really feel bad about not giving the conversation my full attention, Grant wasn't either. All spies flick their eyes around to see everything going on and keep tabs on it. That together with the near constant twitching leads outsiders to think that most spies and assassins have ADHD.

I perked my ears up when I heard my name mentioned by Tina. "You were with Zach?!" Great, because no one could have heard that. I let my eyes roll & grant grinned enjoying the awkward of the situation. I made a mental note to kill Grant later and began to prepare for the onslaught of questions that would follow.

"So Zach," Tina said leaning over me. "Is it true that you were with Cammie last night before the Code Black?"

_Hear we go. _I thought. "Cammie? Morgan? Why would I be with her?" It's always easiest to lie and say you don't know something than lying and saying you do.

Tina flipped her eyes over me, then to Cammie, and then back to me, and I could tell that she had bought it. Because to her Cammie was the Chamealean, the invisible girl; and I was the boy who excelled at P&E, and spent my time talking to people but not actually telling them anything.

I caught Cammie looking at me like I had just smacked her. Actually if I had smacked her she would probably look about twice as pissed and I would be looking up at her from a cushy position on the ground. Cammie looked like I had just told her that my mother had killed her dad. (not confirmed, but definently more than possible). That was one look that I could have gone a life time without seeing, and would have to work a life time to forget.

Suddenly I felt the overwhelming urge to dump my story and use my concealed knife to pin Tina against the wall for buying the load of crap that I was so good at spinning as candy. Instead I just carried on with the story in a smooth confused voice and tried to ignore the bitter taste the words were leaving behind. "yeah sure I saw her at the party," I let out a little half laugh and barely managed to avoid chocking on it. "But I wasn't _with _her."

Now Cammie was looking a little more pissed. Pissed was okay. I knew how to deal with girls who where pissed at me. My mother had given me ample practice. But she also looked hurt, and that was something that was making my stomache feel like it was being stabbed with hot pockers. I had to get out of that situation, and I had to get out of there _Now. _

"See ya later." I said. Getting up and leaving a regretfully unfinished breakfast behind me.

* * *

What do normal boys do when they feel like crap? They punch stuff really hard. What do spy boys do when they feel like crap? They also punch stuff really hard. The only difference being that we get to do it for credit. Well, judging from the way the punching bag was crumpling under my fists, I had just earned enough extra credit points to float me the rest of the year.

The calming rhythm of pounding that was my fists was interrupted by a shrill voice screaming, "You liar!"

Now that I could handle. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. Besides, I had expected a lot worse. I pointed at myself and said "Spy." Because it was true. I may have been going to a school for assassins, but for all intents and purposes, I was a spy. I didn't want to have to register the look on Cammie's face, so instead I went back to demolishing the punching bag with even more force than I had been using before.

"Zach!" she shouted again. Like maybe I had actually forgotten that she was there."You _know _I didn't breach security last night. You know I didn't cause the code black." So true. I also happened to know that the breach had most likely been caused by my mother. Though that was not really something I felt like working into the conversation.

I looked at her. "Oh, I thought it was a false alarm?" And elephants might be pink.

Cammie hit the bag in frustration. I couldn't blame her. Better she hit the bag than try and hit me, and hitting stuff was seriously therapeutic. I examined her positioning. She wasn't really putting enough drive behind it. "Put your shoulder into it now."

"I know how to do it," she snapped.

She sounded so much like a little girl that I had couldn't help but smile and ask, "Do you?"

Her answere came in the form of the bag suddenly flying into my stomach, knocking my breath away. I just stood doubled over for a moment until I got my breath back. "Nice one Gallagher Girl."

"Don't call me-"

But I was done. I didn't want to here her being angry anymore. Instead I just let the part of my brain that controlled what I said snap off, and started to tell her what I was really thinking.

I stepped around the bag and put my hands on her shoulders. I felt the now familiar tingles race up my fingers and along my arms. "Look, do you really want everyone knowing we were together? I paused and let my words sink in. "Do you think maybe what happened last night wasn't any of Tina Walters buisness?" More like what I half wished had happened wasn't any of Tina's buisness. Oh well, technicalities.

I watched Cammie as she processed what I had said. But because I didn't want her processing to far I said,"Besides," and paused to wipe sweat off my face. "I thought you liked your interludes secret and mysterious. Your boyfreinds, private."

Cammie's face turned that beutiful pink again and I knew immediately that I had made her mad again. I seemed to be good at that. "We were not having an interlude. And you are not my boyfreind."

"Yeah, I noticed that." I said hitting the bag again. Uh oh. Time to turn the mental filter back on.

I really hoped she hadn't noticed the slip but no such luck. She was a spy. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I stopped punching momentarily and shook my head. "You're the Gallagher Girl. You figure it out." When you have no answeres you turn back the question. "Besides, at my school we learn how to keep a secret. Like that wasn't rule number one here.

"Yeah, I know. I go to a school like yours."

I appraised her quickly. Her in her private school girls uniform, with her hair in a messy ponytail. The pretty, innocent, ever changing eyes.

"Do you?" Then I turned and walked away.

**A/N: So? What did you think**


	12. Chapter 12

**_Disclaimer: Unless there has been a cosmic shift in the order of the universe, I'm still not Ally Carter._**

_The thing about punching stuff, is that it hurts you almost as much as it hurts the guy you're punching. Well, more or less. It depends on where, who, and how you're punching. The point is that after punching a bag very, very, hard repeatedly without gloves. The chances are that you will probably damage your hands._

_Now, the thing you should know about my reaction to pain, is that I prefer to use the, just-ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away-eventually. Normally it works pretty well, if you can ignore something long enough for it to go away then it can't actually be that bad. It works for Olympic athletes, it works for me._

_So by the time I got back to the dorm I had managed to successfully ignored the throbbing in my fingers. Unfortunately, the first words out of Grant's mouth were, "Dude, What the hell did you do to your hands?!"_

_For the first time I actually looked down and took stock of the injuries. My knuckles were scraped, but that was pretty normal. The non-normal thing was the pale violet color that the whole of both hands had turned, and the size my fingers had become._

_"__Huh, that's an interesting color." I commented. I was feeling slightly detached. That's my second pain response, pull out of your own brain._

_"__Seriously? That's your only reaction?" Grant asked skeptically. He got up and walked over to my. He flipped my hands over and applied light pressure to my bruises. That definitely pulled me back to Earth. I sucked in a tight breath through my teeth, and I winced slightly. Grant noticed the wince and frowned. "Hey Jonas, did you ever install that X-Ray program you were talking about on to your computer?"_

_"__You think it's that bad?" Jonas hadn't looked up from his computer to ask. Grant rolled his eyes and spun Jonas's chair so ha could see my hands. Jonas's mouth popped open. "I'll fire up the program."_

_So that was how it was ascertained that I had managed to fracture both hands in at least two different places, and had done a whole lot of bruising._

_While Jonas had taken the X-Ray, Grant had stepped out and returned with a bucket of ice. I submerged my fingers gratefully._

_Grant flopped down onto his bed and said, "Okay, talk."_

_"__What about?" Playing dumb is always a good option when you're trying to postpone what is likely the inevitable._

_"__What got you angry. And don't say nothing because I have known you for four years and the only other time I've seen you break your hands without noticing it was when we were in 7__th__grade and that senior decided it would be fun to play prank the new guy."_

_"__Wait, what happened?" Jonas asked. Jonas had started at Blackthorne as an 8__th__grader, and thus, had missed the lovely experience when a senior boy named Phillip Cole had decided that it would be funny to cut the power to only our dorm room. When I figured out who it was I pummeled the guy into a bloody pulp and came out of it with more fractures than were easily countable. _

_Grant told Jonas the story as I contemplated the slowly melting ice cubes around my still puffy fingers. "So what happened?" He asked when he finished._

_I sighed, "Fine, Cammie and I may have had a little 'discussion' in the P&E barn around the time when the fracturing occurred." _

_Grant whistled. "Did this discussion have anything to do with the conversation you had at breakfast?"_

_"__You could say that, yes."_

_"__You got into a fist fight with Cammie!" Jonas exclaimed in shock. Apparently he was a little behind on the news. Also, I would be willing to bet that the part that bugged him most was the idea that I might have hit a girl. Jonas was from a family where his parents served on community service chairs, and where he had been told to play nice on the play ground._

_Of course, he would probably get over that pretty quickly if he came to watch a P&E class here. Or if he knew just how many people my mother had killed to get what she wanted._

_I sighed, "Jonas, I was using the punching bag when Cammie came in. I wound up punching a little harder than I should have over the course of the conversation."_

_"__Oh."_

_I pulled my hands out of the ice bucket and dried them with a towel and taped the fractured fingers to the non-fractured ones._

_"__So how did the conversation go exactly?" Grant fished._

_"__Oh, just the regular, 'why'd you do that? Where were you? I hate your guts.' Just kid stuff." I flexed my fingers experimentally. I grimace a little at the painful twinge, but now that the swelling was down I would be able to work around it_

_"__Want to talk about it?"_

_"__Nope."_

_"__Okay." That was it for that conversation._

* * *

_"Now Grant answere this question; What is your full name?" Dr. Steve asked. We were doing a team building excersise. _

_It was kind of similar to that game where everyone has to say something personal about themselves. Except in this version we were all either supposed to tell the truth or lie convincigly enough to get away with it._

_It was really pretty boaring. Apparently Grant thought so to because the next words out of his mouth were, "Georgio, Roberto, Andreas, Newman-Taylor the third."_

_Dr. Steve checked the lie detection monitor he was holding. "Well, frankly I'm not sure what's scarier, the fact that you lied that well, or the fact that that might actually have been the truth." He turned to me, "Now Zach, What is your lifes greatest ambition?"_

_"To become a goat farmer." I said sarcastically. However my heart rate was steady and my breathing was even. The lie detector did nothing._

_Steve grinned. "Excellent Zach!"_

_I rolled my eyes, "Are we done yet?"_

_Steve just smiled and slipped out of the room to go get something. Jonas yawned and said, "Seriously, when do we get to leave?"_

_We all just shrugged. I started to count the seconds for how long Steve had been gone. 356 seconds later he reapeared and dissmissed us for bed._

_As soon as I entered the dorm room I knew something was wrong. Grant bumped into me when I stopped in the doorway. "Zach, I know that look. What's wrong?"_

_"I don't know yet."_

_The room looked the same. Everything was in order. Nothing out of place. Then I caught it, the smell of strawberries like Cammie's shampoo, and something that seamed suspiciously similar to Bex's British perfume._

_"We've had some visitors."_

**_A/N: Sooo? What did you think? I'm sorry I didn't update yesterday but I had to do christmas decorating. I'm on vacation now though, so I'll be able to update more often :). Reviews are love! Well, not literally._**


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately, still no.**

So, what did we do with all of our super spy skills when we swept the room and found bugs everywhere from in the light bulbs to in our shoes? Absolutely nothing. Except make sure we didn't say anything interesting in the dorm rooms. It was surprisingly interesting. And I found out that Grant knew a suprising amount about basketball stats. It must have been driving Cammie crazy.

The next day during CoveOps class Cammie and her roomates were whispering somthing. I didn't try to listen to the conversation. I could pretty much guess what was being said.

Meanwhile I twidled my thumbs and waited for Solomon to show up. When he did he said "Assets." He pushed up his shirt sleeves and walked to the chalkboard. "Define the term Ms. Alvarez."

"An asset is an individual recruited and utilized by an operative to gain covert information." Eva recited. That girl talks like she swallowed the textbook. Did we have textbooks for this class? Whatever, the point is that Solomon ignored her.

"Listen up and listen well." Like one of us might not have been paying attention. "The most important thing any of you will ever do is _make people trust you." _Oh man, was he preaching to the quire on that one. "You will become someone you aren't in order to befreind someone you hate." You mean how I survived the first twelve years of my life living with my mother?

Solomon studied each and every one of us in turn, and I might have been imagining it, but I think he studied me for a little bit longer. Well I had already certified that he knew about my mother. He probably knew he was telling me my life story. "We develope assets ladies and gentelmen. We find people who have information that we want and we take it. Or we persuade them to give it to us. We find traitors." He paused. "We lie."

If it hadn't been a serious talk I would have emploed the phrase _No shit Sherlock. _As it was I looked at Cammie instead and saw her vaguely queasy expression. I thought that maybe she was in the wrong line of work if this was making her queasy, but then I saw Bex mouthing: P_hase Two._

_Oh good God in heaven. Iv'e never asked you for anything before, in fact I'm pretty sure you don't exist. But if you're up there, could you please let me know what phase two is before it gets to the point where it might kill me? _Yeah, sure with my luck, it was more likely that I would be smited then given any help.

As soon as we exited the class I motioned to Grant that we neaded to talk. He tore himselfe away from Bex and came over. "What?" He asked looking impatient.

"Did you not see any of what Bex was mouthing during class?" I asked incrediously.

"Should I have?" now he sounded confused.

"Well I figured with the amount of time you spent starring at her face you would have noticed her lips moving."

"Yeah yeah yeah because your focus is always 100% when Cammie's-" then he was cut of by my elbow driving into his stomache. He wound up making a sort of half chocked sound instead. When he could breath again he said "Okay fine what was British Bombshell mouthing that I missed because I was staring at her beautiful emerald green pools of eyes. And her-"

"Do I need to elbow you again?" I asked cutting him off.

"No"

"Good. She mouthed, 'phase two'. For your information."

"What do we do?" I really do hate it when people say that to me. You know, because of the whole aforementioned leadership thing. But in this case I actually had a plan.

"Well, we know they have a plan, but we don't know what it is. So we stay ready for anything and see what pans out so we can make our own plan."

"So basically, were winging it."

I glared the glare that I normally reserve only for people I really hated. "Have you got a better idea?"

* * *

So that was how I wound up preparing for every eventuallity I could think up for the next day and a half. Of course following the laws of universe, the only eventuality I wasn't preppared for was the one that actually happened.

She approached me when we exited the tea room.

"Hey Gallagher Girl," I flashed her a smile while privately thinking I-know-what-you're-doing-&-you-dont-know-I-know. "What can I do for you?" Might as well just let her say whatever she was going to say.

She took a breath and lightly composed her face. "Mr. Smith says our midterm papers have to be a joint project. And my mother said that I should make an effort to 'embrace the collaborative nature of this experience'."

_Not bad Gallagher Girl. _I could almost believe her. If I hadn't known she would be trying something. At least this could turn out to be amusing for me. And if she was leading up to what I thought she was leading up to this would be very interesting. I could at least not make it any easier for her.

"And you want to embrace me?" _Not an awful thought. _That part of my brain didn't seem to be able to say much else on the subject. I had learned to just try to ignore it.

"Only in the academic sense. Look do you want to do this project or not?"

Why the hell not. At the very least I could have a very akward and potentially entertaining date. With Cammie. _Oh crap, I actually liked her. Shoot me now. There is no way this can end well. _I thought. But before I could say something really stupid Cammie said "So?"

"Sure Gallagher Girl," I walked halfway down the hallway and waited until there was a class of girls between us before calling "It's a date!"

I had to have a little fun right?

* * *

I made my way to the library that night and wound up arriving before Cammie. I didn't even want to think about what Bex, Macey, and Liz were putting Cammie through for this 'date'. Whatever it was, it was probably only legal in Europe and shouldn't be legal anywhere.

I took a table at the back of the library and put out down my back pack. You can give soemone all the training in the world. It will not change the fact that textbooks are heavy.

Cammie entered exactly 2 minutes and 37 seconds later. She looked pretty, and fairly normal. In fact this was the first time I had ever seen her wearing jeans. Still I couldn't help but feel a little more aware of the fact that this was technically a date. "Hello Gallagher Girl." That seemed to be all the sound my throat could accurately produce at the moment.

She came and sat down accross from me. "So," her voice cracked a little. "What should we start on?"

"I don't know." This was her party so to speak. Her mission. I wasn't going to do the work for her. Besides when you play dumb, sometimes people will explain things to you.

After 2 minutes of silence she spoke again. "Zach." I looked at her. "So, I was thinking we could look at the impact of propaganda in third world economics."

Personally I thought that we could probably just type that into Google, plagerize, hack the site, take down the original article, and we would still get full credit for it because we had been good enough to pull of the hacking. But instead of saying that I just said, "That's what you were thinking?"

"Yes,"

She looked like she was waiting fo rme to either say something or look away, but I did neither. I just let myselfe look at her. It felt vaguely like I was slipping off of a cliff (believe me. Iv'e done it), but this didn't feel exactly the same. Because, when you start slipping off a cliff, there's always the chance that you will be able to find something to grab onto. This didn't feel like I was facing anything that I could stop. The only thing I could see facing me was a very long fall with a very hard landing that might or might not kill me.

"So... I guess we should outline the report and maybe summarize our notes and-"

I cut her off. I thought that maybe if I could cut off this whole experience, maybe the slipping feeling would be cut off to. Gallagher Girl. Is there something you want to ask me?"

"No." She lied easily. Then we went back to our books.

Silence is weird. It can stretch for ages and never bother you, or it can crush you like a freaking anvil. This was one of the anvil silences. I pretended it didn't bother me, and eventually Cammie broke it.

"So-" She started but never finished. Apparently she didn't actually have any idea where she was going with that.

"So..." I let my words stretch out longer to try and lift part of the anvil.

"So what do you think of the Gallagher Academy?"

Well akward conversation was better than no conversation. Besides, any where was better than Blackthorne. This place was like a cinderella fairly land compared to Blackthorne. "Oh, it's swell."

More silence for a while until two 8th grade girls passed through the library giggling and whispering. Cammie went up e notch higher in my books when I saw Cammie studiously ignoring them. "You handled that pretty well," I said with a nod toward the whisperers.

"Well I've had some practice, i guess. Besides, sticks and stones." Oh how true. If giggling broke spies, the government would go through them faster than toothpicks.

She turned a page in her note book and efter another long moment of silence I decided enough was enough. "I gotta say," I laced my fingers behind my head and tipped back on two legs of the chair. "I'm a little disapointed."

"Disapointed!" She cried out. Thus came the climax of my quest to elevate her blood pressure.

I laughed. 'Yeah, Gallagher Girl. I thought you had a reputation for being... proactive." That was putting it mildly.

"Yeah? Well what would you do if everyone thought you had breached security?"

I leaned forward again and let the chair legs reconnect with the floor. "I would probably find out everything that I could about anyone who was..._new?" _I said it like it had only just occured to me when really I had known it for a long time. "Who maybe didn't have an alabi on the night of the ball? I might even try to get close to anyone I suspected." I leaned closer to her which I only realized after I did it that it was a bad idea. "I might even bug their rooms if I got the chance."

"Hahaha." She fake laughed.

"But you wouldn't do any of that would you Gallagher Girl?" I said standing.

"Of course I-"

I dropped the bug I had found in the electric outlet onto the table, then before I could stop myselfe I leaned in and whispered. "I'm not all bad Gallagher girl." it was true. My dad had been a lovely guy. It was just too bad he had married Satan. I grabbed my jacket and started to leave. "Of course I'm not all good either."

I started walking and then called. "Thanks for the date!"

**A/N: Review review review! I'll post more tommorow!**


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: Only in my dreams**

"Lies," Mr. Solomon said the next morning. "We tell them to our freinds. We tell them to our enemies. And eventually we tell them to our selves."

_Check, check, and check._ I thought as Mr. Solomon wrote on the blackboard.

"A lie is typically accompanied by what physical symptoms, Ms. Lee?" he asked.

"Dialated pupils, increased pulse, and atypical mannerisms." Lucky me I had learned how to control each and every one of those symptoms at age six. Except the pupils thing. Eyes have a life of their own, you can't really control your pupils. Hey, what do you think spies invented sunglasses for?

"Spies tell lies ladies and gentelmen." Solomon said. He was right. Some people think that lying is just a part of a spies job resume. They are wrong. Lying _is _a spies job description. "But that's not what today is about. Today is about being anle to spot them. Now a seasoned operative will know how to control their pulse and voice." You notice how he didn't say pupil dialation? "For the purpose of todays lesson I think these will come in handy."

He handded everyone a small object that looked a lot like a cheap plastic mood ring. "Dr. Steve has been kind enough to share these prototypes of a new portable voice stress analyzer he's develping." I double checked the peice of plastic for any sign that it was worth something but it still looked like something you could pay 50 cents for.

"You have to be close to your subject." he explained and walked to Tina's desk. "And the rings can be fooled with training." _Good to know. "_For example, ask me a question Ms. Walters, any question.

She hesitated before asking in true girl fashion. "Do you have a girlfreind?"

Joe Solomon bit back a smile, but ignored the giggling and answered, "No."

Probably true but you never can tell. Tina's eyes were wide. "Nothing, it didn't do anything. So it's true?"

"Ask me again." he said.

"Do you have a girlfreind?" Tina repeated.

"Yes." Tina shook the ring in confusion when their was no reaction from the ring. "It's not broken Ms. Walters. It's just not as good as detecting lies as I am at telling them." I filed this away for future reference. Because Solomon was good. But the scary thing was, I was too. "Partner with the person accros from you. Watch their eyes, pay attention to their voices, and see if you can figure out who's lying."

I saw that Cammie was the one sitting accros from me and barely stopped myself from laughing out loud. "Oh." I said raising my eyebrowns, "This should be fun."

She ignored me, which seemed to be something she was getting pretty good at. "What's your name?"

I thought it mght have been a trick question. "Zach."

"What's your _full _name?"

_How about, none of your god damned buisness? _Was my first thought. My second thought was. _Does she work to make her hair look that good?. _My third thought was, _I have __**got **__to have multiple personality disorder. _What I actually wound up saying was "thats a pretty boring question Gallagher Girl."

"Zach!"

"Yes, that's correct." I lifted her right hand and barely managed to not drop it when the tingles raced up my fingers, and down my arm, through my whole body. "See." I chocked out in what probably sounded like my normal voice. "Not lying."

"Where were you during the Code Black?"

_That _was a better question. I broke into a broad smile, "That's better."

"Answere the-"

"I was with you remember?" I leaned accros the table between us let my fingers twine a bit with hers. "My turn." Now I was grinning like a moron, but I didn't care. "Did you have fun last night?"

Her fingers didn't untwine from mine. Maybe she was trying to make sure the ring would stay working. Maybe my hand was warming up her fingers because frankly, they were frozen. Maybe she just hadn't noticed. Either way it felt nice. "Zach I really don't think that's what Mr. Solomon is aiming for with this particular exercise"

"I'll take that as a yes." she turned that perfect delicate pink and I knew I was right. Before I could stop myselfe I let my brain control flip off. "We should really do it again some time." _Hey, why not if your already screwed for life? _

From how I was still holding her hand I could tell the ring hadn't done anything. For once though, a lie detector hadn't done anything because I wasn't lying.

"Where are you from?"

"The Blackthorne Institute for Boys." I said in a sing songy voice.

"What do your parents do?"

That tugged out all the humor from the situation. I didn't smirk or joke. I just used my left hand to straighten the note book on my desk. "What do you think they do?"

She was silent for a moment and was very serious. "They were CIA?" She wispered. I don't know how but she had managed to pick up that we were talking past tense. She must have identified it from past experience. I remembered those few words in her fathers file _missing in action presumed dead. _

"Used to be." That was true. My father had worked for the CIA before he was killed, and my mother had worked for the CIA before she took a one way trip to hell and became the new incarnation of Satan.

But I didn't tell Cammie that I just looked accross the room. Cammie didn't ask either. Instead her hand tightened slightly around mine, and I felt her thumb run gently accross the back of my hand.

Then the bell rang, and Cammie left.

**A/N: What do you think? I added more between Zach and Cammie because I liked it better that way. I hope you do too!" Reviews are better than surviving an apocolypse that didn't happen that was predicted by the Myans thousands of years ago! Seriously, I think the Myans just got board making the callender after so long.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: I'm still me. Oh and incase you guys have been wondering, there is no way that I could be making money off of this. If there was I would have found it, and I would be updating way more frequently.**

"So, did you find out anything about Cammie in class?" Jonas asked when I walked through the door. He had been typing up profiles of any of the girls we knew anything about. So, basically we had minor details about Cammie, extensive details about Liz, nearly nothing about Bex, and _really _nothing about Macey.

I thought about what I could say. Cammie really did think her dad was dead? We had something in common? Maybe, but somehow I couldn't make myself say it. That kind of detail was too personal. "No, I didn't find out anything new."

I looked over at Grant. "Did you get anything on Bex?"

He looked from _The Brothers Karamazov _which happened to be impossible to read even in English (he was reading it in Farsi). "Other than the fact that she truly is British? No I got nothing." He returned to the book for a second and then after 56 seconds of attempting he chucked the book into the wall. "This is pointless! We have their files so why are we trying to get any extra from them? Can't I just have one conversation with Bex without feeling like I'm interrogating her?!"

Jonas and I just stayed still and let Grant work through his steam. We had made a pact a long time ago that we would only interfere with a Grant rant if he managed to keep it up for over five minutes. I just tuned out. Towards the end of the rant he had started changing his languages every other sentence. "...And that book is better as a paper weight!"

"I stopped my contemplation of the window and asked. "Are you done?"

"I think so. Probably."

"Good I can work with that. Now from what I processed from that rant, which for your information lasted 186 seconds, we have three problems." I ticked them off on my fingers. "One, we can't get any info on them but they are still getting info on us. Two, we have no clue how to deal with normal girls. Three, we need to get a new book for Grant."

Jonas raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"That's four problems. 1 we have no extra info on them. 2 they have info on us. 3 we have no clue how to deal with normal girls. And 4 is that we need a new book for Grant."

"Okay fine we have _four _problems. What are their solutions?."

This is what we came up with:

1. Well truth serum is always an option

2. Stop giving them info

3. These aren't normal girls we're dealing with so no source would be applicable

4. Have you ever heard of a magical place called the library Grant?

It was kind of sad really.

* * *

That night I couldn't sleep. I was so tired that it was impossible for me to tell the thinking part of my brain to shut up. I decided that the only real way I could make the thought train break down was to think through some things. I slipped silently out of the bed and put my shoes on. Then I snuck out of the room.

I didn't worry about being caught. I thought that it was probably more likely that Istanbul would change back into Constantinople than the probability that I would get caught.

I tried to think everything through. I really and truly did, but my thoughts just kept on returning to Cammie. I rested my head against the wall and tried to stop the whirl wind. I was getting a headache and I seriously wished I had taken some advil. Then I heard a thump echo through the wall. I jerked my head up then it came again. I tipped my head side ways and listened to the sound. I smiled, the wall was hallow. I followed the wall to the fire place and waited.

When Cammie popped out of a fire place I stayed silently in the corner until she had turned around to close the passage she had come from. Then I said, "So the tour is closed huh?"

Cammie jumped and I winced as her head wacked hard into the top of the fire place. That had to hurt a lot. "Ow!" she cried clutching her head. "What are _you_ doing here?"

I ignored the question and instead decided to check on weather or not she had a concussion. "Come on." I told her and gently pushed my fingers through the hair at the back of her head. I could already feel a bump starting to form. She tried to pull away but I just pushed a little bit harder. She shivered and I half worried that she was cold. After all it was chilly and she was tiny. "You'll live." I told her once I was sure the lump wouldn't swell any farther.

"You're being nice." She commented. She sounded a little bit shocked.

"Don't tell anyone." I joked, looking at the stone wall she had just magically appeared from, and crossed my arms. "So did your bugs here anything interesting?" She gaped like a fish for a minute. "What is it Gallagher Girl? No snappy comebacks? Nonexistant cat named Suzie got your tounge.

"How do you know about Suzie?"

I pointed at myselfe, "Spy."

It was silent. The moonlight shone through the windows bleaching Cammie's hair of all color. I looked at her again. Her eyes looked pale blue now and they were still sparkling with light tears from the pain that still had to be throbbing through her whole head. A few strands of hair had fallen in her eyes and she didn't move to shift it.

Suddenly I regained the sensation of slideing over a cliff. I reached out slowly and gently brushed the hair out of her eyes. I felt the tingling slide up my fingers. Suddenly something clicked into position with my thought process and I jerked my hand back. _What the hell was I thinking? _

I guess I wasn't really thinking about anything because I sudenly found myselfe saying. "Why don't you ask me about it? About them?" I didn't tell her that I was talking about my parents. I didn't have to."I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours." I heard myselfe promise.

I didn't expect her to answere but then I heard her voice say,"It was a mission. Four years ago my dad went on a mission. He didn't come home. Nobody knows what happened."

I knew that story. It was the same one I had been told when I got the news that my father was dead. The only difference was that I knew exactly what had happened. You never forget the words your mother uses to tell you that she killed your father because he got in the way. I fixed my gaze on her and said. "Somebody knows."

Silence stretched on like the Sahara Dessert until she said. "What? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying somebody knows." I replied. My voice was getting stronger. I probably could tell her almost exactly what had happened if she had died when my dad did, and wierdly enough I had a serious urge to tell her everything. But I couldn't, because she was looking up at me like maybe I could explain something to her. Like I was the boy who might be a potential ally. She looked at me annoyed, scared, sad, and hopeful. She had never looked at me like the son of a traitor, and I couldn't make myselfe change that.

Her eyes looked shattered and exhausted. "What am I suppose to do Zach? I'm just-"

"Just a girl?" I knew that my words wee hurting her but I couldn't stop the words coming now. "I thought you were a Gallagher Girl?" If I was less tired I might have apologized. I might have stayed there and let her cry into my shirt. But instead, I turned and half sleep walked back to bed.

My last thoughts before I fell asleep were. _Well I am definently up shit creek now. _And not only did I not have a paddle, my boat was sinking.

**A/N: What do you think? I hope you liked it! I had some requests to put in more with Grant so I'll try to work him in to at least every chapter from now on if I can. Reviews are like dimonds. Just not as sparkly.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer: Well I'm still not rich and still not named Ally Carter so no I don't own this stuff.**

Over the next 2 weeks I did my best to avoid Cammie completely. I didn't really know what to say to her after that night. What on earth do you say to a girl you made cry. Sorry? Yeah, I don't think so.

If Grant and Jonas noticed, they didn't say anything. I bet they didn't notice anything either. They may have known me better than almost anyone else, and they may have been verry good spies in trining, but that didn't mean that they knew when I was hiding something. I was to good at hiding for that.

The only person who apparently noticed anything was Mr. Solomon. He came up to me after a CoveOps class and stoped me leaving with the others. "Zach, stay here a moment. I want to talk to you," For those of you wondering, when someone who could kill you asks to talk to you, you take a minute out of your schedule, and talk to them.

"What's up?"

Solomon shuffled and organized a stack of papers on his desk, "I spend enough time asking evasive questions so I'm just going to ask this straight out." I waited for whatever was coming. I was expecting something like, are you another supreme over lord of evil like your mother? What he said instead was almost as scary. "What did you do to make Cammie angry with you?"

Okay, so that wasn't what I was expecting. I struggled to find a plausable answere to give him that would make him drop the subject. He just kept looking at me waiting for an answere. I decided to tell the truth, "I might have, sort of brought up a few thoughts about her father."

Solomon sucked in a quick breath, "Why would you do that?"

Crap. "That day in class with the mood rings she asked what my parents did-" I had more to the explanation but Mr. Solomon cut me off.

"So you just decided to return the favor?" he was starting to sound a little angry now.

I raised my hands, "Let me finish. I said that my parents used to be CIA which is perfectly true. Cammie guessed that I meant my parents were dead which is half true so I didn't correct the assumption." I waited a moment to see if he wanted to say anything else but he just nodded for me to keep going. "That night I couldn't sleep so I took a walk through the halls where I ran into Cammie. We got back onto the subject of parents and I told her I'd tell her what had happened to mine if she told me what happened to hers."

I waited for a second, "She told me that she didn't know, and I told her that someone must." Solomon's breath constricted again as I watched him. "You know." It wasn't a question. I knew that he knew.

When he didn't ask anymore questions I turned to leave. I didn't ask about why he cared, or why he wanted to know. Right then it didn't matter. When I reached the door he asked. "Would you have?"

I turned slowly, "Would I have what?"

"Told her. If the conversation had gone differently would you have told her about your parents, warts and all?"

I thought for a moment before arriving at my answere. "I think I would have, but it's past now ther's no point in bringing that up again. All it did was hurt her."

Mr. Solomon nodded and I started to leave again. "You could still tell her you know." He said, still gradeing papers.

I shook my head. "I don't think I can, and I don't think you would understand why." I could feel his question in the silence it was _Why don't you try me?_ I took a breath and prepared to explain. "Everybody who knows, when they look at me all they see is her. Cammie doesn't know, and she looks at me as me. I might infuriate her, I might upset her, and I might make her laugh. Either way she doesn't look at me as the son of a muderer."

Then I turned and left the room before he could say another word.

* * *

Over the next few days, I couldn't get the onversation with Mr. Solomon out of my mind. Or the look on Cammie's face when she tried not to cry. I neede a way to make it up to her but I couldn't think of anything. That's when I heard about the town weekend.

I decided that as a spy. I should ask her in a way that was well, spy-like. I wrote a quick message on a peice of Evapopaper. I didn't take to much time on it but the message got accross. The note read:

**So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something?**

**-Z**

**P.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind.**

I bumped into her on purpose when she was leaving the grand hall. "Sorry," I murmured. Then I kept walking and tried very hard not to think about the fact that I had pretty much just asked Cammie out on a date.

**A/N: Well first of all, Happy Christmas Eve! I love this holiday! What do you think of the story. I thought Mr. Solomon needed a little more mention so I put him in. Review please! :)**


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer: Still don't own this.**

"So you ignored her for 2 weeks, and now your going on a date with her because somehow our teacher twisted your head around and that's all you'll say about it?" Grant asked from the floor of our dorm room.

I thought quickly over everything that had happened that day. "Um yeah?"

"So do you actually like her?" Jonas asked from his spot at the computer.

"I don't know! This is the only girl where I've ever had a cause to think about it."

"How do you react when you see her? I'll punch all of the details into this computer program and it'll tell us how you relly feel." Jonas said as he prepared to type it in. Grant and I just stared at him like he had grown an extra head. "What?"

Grant turned to me, "Does he not realize how creepy that sounded? Does he have no social awarness?"

I shrugged, "Maybe the government really has developed a cyborg program and he's a test subject."

"Hey!" he protested. "I'm a person! I just think that the computer could give us some valuable data. It could imput data points and cross chack it with body language indicators in order to-"

Grant punched him hard in the stomach. Jonas doubled over weezing for a few minutes. Grant turned back to me, "He's human." He confirmed.

"Fabulous. Now that we've established that, could we gt back to the question of what in the hell to do on a date with a girl who may or may not hate you?" I asked. I was feeling a vauge sense of panic that I normally associated with being surrounded by large groups of heavily armed hostiles.

"You know this whole thing would be way easier if one of us had ever even watched a movie with a date in it?" Grant observed.

I groaned, "So basically, you have no clue."

He thought for a moment, "Yeah Iv'e got no clue."

I flopped on the bed "Great. So I guess I'm flying blind on this one."

Jonas sat across from me, "Well, why don't you treat it like a mission? You're great at those. Set objectives, carry them out, Grant and I'll do tactical support."

* * *

So that was how I wound up waiting for Cammie at the bottom of the grand staircase with a coms set in my ear, and some type of gel in my hair courtesy of Grant.

"Dude, are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Grant asked through the coms unit.

"That really depends on what it is you're seeing Grant," I said. barely moving my lips to talk. "Because if you're seeing a giant pink elephant then obviously no, I am not seeing what you're seeing, and we should really get you some psychological help."

"No, I am seeing they most beautifull girl in the unniverse." I looked at the mirror on the wall and saw that Grant was meeting Bex and shook my head.

Then I saw Cammie. _Oh yes Grant I am most definently seeing what you're seeing._Cammie was wearing civilian clothes and her hair and make up had obviously not been done by her. Most people probably wouldn't glance at her twice, but I was having trouble looking anywhere else.

We walked in to the town without really talking. The wind was blowing to hard for us to be heard without shouting, and there wasn't really anything we could legally shout about in a mostly civilian setting.

When we arrived in town there was what looked like a parade in full swing and Cammie spoke, "Do you want to do something?" she sounded a little akward, but after all this was an akward situation."

"We could go to a movie or get something to eat," I suggested.

"Okay," she replied without choosing.

"Or we could just...walk," now I felt a little awkward.

"Okay."

I didn't think she was paying attention so I decided to throw in an odd ball option, "Or we could have that clown over there paint our faces and then go rob the bank."

She grinned, "No way. Last October they installed a Stockholm Series 360- it'd take us at least forty-five minutes to crack it."

Well if I was goin to plan a heist here that would be extremely good information to have, "Good to know," I said with a laugh.

Cammie laughed with me and I felt an urge to just forget for once in my life that almost everything in my life is completely fake. I wanted to pretend that I was a normal teenager on a normal date, with a normal girl.

Before i could think again I took her hand and pulled her into a quiet sidestreet. "So, plant any good bugs lately?" I was teasing her but she didn't laugh or speak.

The silence of the moment seemed to be electrically charged like a storm cloud. I decided that if I was going to go to hell then I had seriously nothing left to lose. "Just so you know Gallagher Girl, I'm going to kiss you now."

Might as well give the girl a warning right?

I moved my hand to the back of her neck and leaned forward to kiss her. I closed my eyes and for a second I was actually able to forget everything that sucked about my life.

And then, "Oh my gosh Cammie is that you?" said a high girls voice.

Some people say that the best part of being a spy is pretending to be someone else. In my opinion it's being able to curse people to hell and back in multiple languages without them having a clue when they've pissed you off.

**A/N: Review! I think I'll only have one more chapter after this. Merry Christmas!**


	18. Chapter 18

**Still me so...no.**

"Hi Cammie!" DeeDee exclaimed as she hugged Cammie and I inched away. DeeDee beamed at me and I smiled back while internally I was cursing her timing, then I noticed Josh standing about five feet away. "I'm so glad you two are here!"

Obviously Josh didn't agree with that statement. His face looked a little like he had been hit by a very large truck for those of you who needed a visual aid for this.

Cammie looked like he was half listening to whatever DeeDee was saying. I followed her line of sight and saw a tall man accross the street.

He looked normal enough but I recognized him. I had seen him a few times talking to Dr. Steve. I knew why Cammie was looking though, there is a saying in the CIA about counter surveilance; once is a stranger, twice is a coincidence, three times is a tale. This was the third time we'd seen the guy.

All four of us started walking through the town and Cammie dropped back until she was level with me. If I had actually been a normal person I would have held her hand or something, but because I was an assasin in training I had been trained to know that hand holding is merly a vonurable tacticle position.

She wispered to me, "You're going to think I'm crazy,"

"A little late for that Gallagher Girl." That was true. You have to be nuts to be a spy or an assassin. If we were sane we wouldn't sign up for the career path. Several old guys glared at us when they heard the word Gallagher.

"You haven't seen anybody following us have you?" she asked.

I laughed, "You mean besides your roommates?" I had seen them following us for the past twelve and a half minutes.

She ignored that I had made her freinds. "Yeah, besides them."

"No. I haven't seen anyone on our tail. Why?"

"The guy the blue jacket," DeeDee turned around to look at us so Cammie change what she had been going to say. "Don't you think he's kind of _toasty _in that heavy jacket?" She had used government slang for an operative who had been made.

I turned casually and looked at the guy like I hadn't already seen him."What about him?" I asked casually.

"The jacket's reversible. Ten minutes ago he was wearing it the other way. Do you think a lot of guys in Roseville take the time to reverse their jackets?"

Cammie was to good at this for her own safety. Now I could either say that I knew the guy and risk blowing my cover, or I could do what came naturally to me and lie my ass off.

We stopped to look at the reflection in a store window. "Look at the guy Gallagher Girl." I wispered to her as theguy bought a corn dog. "He's a mustard disaster _looking_ for a place to happen. I bet you anything he's got a big stain on the other side."

DeeDee turned and asked, "Now what are you two chatting about?" we probably looked like a boyfreind and a girlfreind chatting abou tnothing more important than our next date instead of two spies/assassins to be who were on a trip that may or may not be classified as a date, talking about someone who may or may not be a security breach waiting to happen.

I spoke casually, "Oh, Cammie was just trying to convince me that I should recognize the guy in the blue jacket." I turned and looked straight into Cammie's eyes. They looked dark blue now, and said, "But, Iv'e never seen him before in my life."

Cammie glanced down quickly and then back up. Then she smiled and took DeeDee's arm. "Iv'e got to go to the bathroom."

"I'll walk with you-" I started to say. I hoped I sounded like an over protective boyfreind and not a stalker but either way she cut me off.

"No," she said smiling at DeeDee. "It's a girl thing."

Then, both girls beaming at each other, they slipped away.

_What the Hell? _I thought. She must have ditched out on purpose but how could she have known I was lying? I remembered her glancing down at her hand after I had lied._ "_Damn it!" I swore. She had still been wearing a mood ring.

Josh looked at me weird and I realized I had sworn in English instead of a different language and I probably looked like freak. "What are you looking at Jimmy?"

"It's Josh."

"Whatever. Why are you looking at me like I have a third head?"

He looked like he was trying to find the right words, "It's just, DeeDee and Cammie only went to the bathroom and you still look like you're prepping to take down a small third world nation incase she doesn't come back."

Not true. When I prepare to take down a small third world nation i take a lot more fir power, a parachute, and probably Grant.

I just tried to pass of a plausable lie. "I'm just a little worried, Cammie has a nack for causing trouble wherever she goes." I would probably never tell him another word that would be more true.

"I noticed that."

We stood in silence for a moment, then he said, "This probably goes without saying, but if you hurt her I will hunt you down and kill you."

I made a sound that was close to choking as I tried to keep myselfe from laughing. It was just way too hilarious for this been pole to be threatening to hurt me if I hurt Cammie. I could probably take him down with no effort in about two seconds. Besides, I change my name and disapear forever if it was the only way to keep Cammie safe.

That was when I decided to get back to Gallagher and protect Cammie from whatever the hell was going on weather she liked it or not. I stopped myselfe laughing and clapped Josh on the shoulder. "Duely noted Jimmy." I said before vanishng into the crowd.

**A/N: Okay so I lied. There will be one more chapter to finish up the book. I just didn't want this chapter to be too long.**


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer: Ha ha ha ha...No**

"Grant, Jonas round up everyone you can and their equipment, we have a really big problem."

"What kind of problem?" Jonas asked.

"The major type," I responded. "Get everyone to rally to my position my watch should still be broadcasting my location and hack Cammie's signal to get me too the right place."

"Got it," Jonas replied.

"Hey Zach? How heavy are we going on the fire power? Caus, I think one of the seniors has an AK47-"

"NO! Keep it strictly combat knives and tasers. Stun guns if you have to, no actuall bullets. We don't want to use any more force than is strictly necessary. Always use the least intrusive means necessary if it's possible." I ordered.

"Anyone ever tell you you're no fun?" Grant complained.

"I'm not going for fun."

"Wow." Jonas said over coms.

I stopped moving. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just, you sound exactly like Mr. Solomon."

I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing so I tried not to think about it until more backup arrived.

"Jonas what's going on at the school?"

"Total Code Black." That made sense. I followed the coordinates Jonas gave me to an old rusty warehouse and waited.

When everyone got to there, I grabbed an equipment bag from a terrified looking freshmen boy and ordered him back to the vans. Then i punched the wall because, as I have mentioned, the only thing I hate more than giving orders is watching other people follow them.

I got to the roof and clipped myselfe into one of the ziplines. I waited 4 minutes and 26 seconds before a small figure appeared o the roof. I knew on instinct that it was Cammie. She was firing orders through a coms unit but she was talking too loudly. Someone would definently hear her.

I swore and stepped forward. I clamped a hand over her mouth and wrapped one arm aroound her waist. My hand could span almost her entire waist. That girl needed to eat something. Like ASAP.

I jumped over the roof before she could start kicking me but I knew I had to act quickly or she would pulverize me the second she could stand. As soon as we hit the other roof I wispered,  
"Cam," she automatically tried to flip me over her shoulder but I countered my weight and stayed standing. "Cammie it's me! It's Zach," I hissed.

A search light spread over the roof and we both immediately dropped to the ground. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't throw you off this building right now," She hissed. But she didn't sound serious, she sounded sad. Like I had let her down.

I would feel bad about that later. Really bad probably but instead of apologizing I rolled closer to Cammie. One of my arms fell accross her shoulders and I held her down as two gaurds walked out onto the roof. "I'll give you two."

Once the gaurds were gone she pushed away, "What's going on Zach? Who were those men in town?" She rolled me onto my stomach pinning one arm behind my back. "How did you find this place? Who is down there, and what are they going to do with the list?"

I could answere most of her questions but the angle my arm was pinned at was a little distracting. "Well first of all _ouch._ Second, I came back to the school after you ditched me in town with Jimmy"

A lie. But I figured it wouldn't be good to say that i had followed her. "Josh!" she snapped.

I ignored her, "I came back to the school after you ditched me- thanks for that by the way. Then it's all Code Black again and you and your whole class were gone. We figured you'd track us, so we tweaked the signal so we could follow your racking mechanism. And here we are."

Really that was what jonas had rattled off into my ear while I waited for everybody so most of that story wasn't even a lie. she gripped my arm tighter, "Who's we?"

"Seriously Gallagher Girl that hurts like a- _Ow!" _She twisted harder. "Grant, Jonas, some of the juniors. They're here, too. They're out there with your girls."

She looked out over the side of the building and I used the distraction to roll and pin her hands instead. She struggled but I snapped, "Cammie, look at me," she kicked harder but I just held her a little bit tighter. "Gallagher Girl," I said it gently. Not as an assassin, or a spy, but as a teenaged guy trying to calm down a girl.

"You lied," her voice was soft but it felt a bit like acid to me. "I know you lied in town Zach. I know you've seen that man who was on our tail."

I exhaled half a choked laugh, "That's what this is about? You ditched me in town, organized a war party, all because I lied about knowing the guy?"

"No, I organized a war party because soemone knocked out Mr. Moscowitz and stole the Gallagher Academy alumni list!"

I knew that my face probably showed absolute terror. That disc was worth lives. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. I loosend my grip on her so I wasn't holding her down. I was just holding her to try and give a little comfort.

She relaxed a little automatically against me and I felt something snap inside me. I ha lied to her about enough things, I couldn't stand the idea that she thought I was lying when I was telling the truth. I grabbed her right hand and held it in front of her face. "Here look at it. Or better yet look at me. Watch my eyes Cammie."

I waited half a second for her now dark green eyes focused on me. "I'm not lying. I'd seen that guy with Dr. Steve before and I didn't want to blow his cover. I had no idea he was a threat. I thought he was on a training op, or- I don't know checking up on us or something. I didn't think it was a big deal." I shifted next to her, "I didn't think it was worth explaining in front of..."

"Josh and DeeDee." She finished.

"Were not the bad guys Gallagher Girl," I said quietly.

She looked like she wanted to believe me, "Then who is?"

A door opened in the building accross from us. Four gaurds came out surrounding another man. I heard a faint 'Excellent' and knew that the man was Dr. Steve.

A wispered babble broke out over the coms. About one minute later Cammie's class mates appeared on the roof, "What's going on Cam?" Bex asked. She glanced at me, "Want me to throw him off the roof?" If Grant and this girl ever had children they would be freaking terrifying.

"Only if he doesn't tell us what the Blackthrone Institute is and why one of their teachers is out to destroy the Gallagher Girls."

"What do you mean? You know what our school is." Grant lied easily.

There was silence until I finally said, "You've got your cover. We've got ours."

"What's that supposed to-" Cammie started.

"You're the Gallagher Girls," I stepped closer to her. She was beautiful and safe. There were no scars accross her hands. "We're the step child no one ever talks about."

"Then what-" The doors opened and she changed tack. "He can't get away. That list can't get away."

She looked like she might panic. "It won't." I reassured. I stepped to the edge of the roof and hooked myselfe into the zip line. Then I reached for her hand. "We've got to go now Cam," she hesitated. "Do you trust me?" I realized that it was basically the same question I had asked a few weeks ago, and we were right back where we started.

Then she smiled, and a warm tingle spread up my whole arm as she took my hand.

**A/N: Fine since I got begged by several people not to end the story yet, we'll stretch this out one more chapter to make it an even 20. Review, because reviews are the essence of amazing.**


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer: Well lets see. Is my first name Ally? NO. Is my last name Carter? Also no. Therefor I am not Ally Carter.**

The second we touched down Cammie sprinted between the buildings. **Note to self: Out running is not a good option were Cammie is involved**

"What are you doing!" I hissed.

Cammie ignored me and pounded on the door, "Hey, can one of you guys give me a hand with this?"

I looked at her like she was certifiably insane and was about to yank her out of the way but them the door opened. Cammie yanked the guy out from behind the door by the collar. Before the gaurd could even gasp, Cammie had knocked him unconscious and smacked a Napotine patch on his forhead.

**Fun Fact #21 (I think): You should never ever(repeat times 1000000) if you value your sanity, get between Cammie and someone she is beating up.**

"Nice one," I told her. "Did you learn that in P&E?" If she had I seriously didn't remember it coming up.

"No, _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._" I nodded. Hey, it doesn't matter where you learned how to beat someone up. What matters is the knowledge.

She dragged the gaurd over to some tall grass about twenty feet away and together, we went through his pockets. "Coms," Cammie said, and tossed them to me.

I inserted the earpeice into the ear that wasn't already connected to a different coms set. Cammie said something to the others about staying put but I ignored it and tried to count the different voices in my ear. I leaned into Cammie and wispered, "They've got at least fifteen guys."

"What do you hear?" she asked. I held up a finger for her to be quiet because I already had the two voices that seemed to make up my brain, and two coms units going at once. I just couldn't take another voice in my head. (I really, really, needed to deal with this multiple personality issue. Get tested at least.)

Oh well, a problem for another time. "How long until the helicopter gets here?" said an unfarmiliar voice. I felt my face cloud over. If Dr. Steve had a helicopter coming then there was no way on hell or earth we could catch him.

"What is it Zach? What's going-"

I cut her off, "Cammie listen to me. I don't know where he's going, or what Dr. Steve's planning to do with that list, but..." Actually I could guess where the disc was going. Probably straight to the devil herselfe; my mother.

I caught sight of a pair of blinking red lights in the sky, "...I think I know how he's getting there." I turned her around so that she could see the incoming helicopter.

"Guys," Cammie wispered through the coms unit. "We've got a change of plans."

* * *

We were outnumbered, outsized, outgunned, out-pretty much everything that mattered, but we didn't have time to come up with a better plan. Instead we just went with the crash in and anihilate stratedgy.

One of the gaurds called out a warning but it was too late. I touched the earpeice and focused on what was coming through the coms. I turned towards Grant and Bex and shouted, "Three guys are coming around the south side of the building, go!"

I gritted my teeth as I watched them follow the order. I should really just get past that giving orders issue. People look to me to order them around anyway. I really don't know why, I cant be that good at leadership. But in this case I might as well lead, otherwise people would probably just start running into walls.

I threw kicks and punches into any of Dr. Steve's gaurds. I barely got hit at all until I saw a frankly enormous guy heading for Liz. Now I know that whole superstition about the age of chivalry being dead, but to me watching a guy who was probebly part mamouth heading for a girl who was probably part pixie was just plain wrong. So I did the only thing I could, I intercepted with my face.

I stumbled back a step as pain and blood spread over my face. I caught Cammie's eyes on me, "Go!" I shouted, and she went.

* * *

Everyone who remained dispatched and tied up the gaurds. Then I waited for someone to call a status check. When no one did I cursed in Greek. Status checks are called by mission leaders, we didn't have a mission leader. This whole thing had been basically improved, which meant that the person who had called the mission was the mission leader.

Which meant the mission leader was me.

I gritted my teeth, "Okay everybody, count off by grade and give me your operational status." It turned out that all twelve boys who had come were operational. We had several bruises and fractures but that could be dealt with. Now I had to figure out what to do next.

"Okay, who here has the best medical knowledge?"

"JONAS," came the response from everyone.

"Jonas, grab all of the medical materials you can find. Anyone who's beaten to pulp, report to Jonas." I rubbed a slight stress headache at my left temple. Or at least I started to, then I was reminded about my black eye by an extreme pain there. That pain made me notice a sharp burn in my hands to. They were apparently not fixed from when I had broken them on that punching bag.

I sat against the wall with my eyes closed and listened to the scene on the roof. I certainly had not been expecting the whole thing to be a test, but I felt pretty confident I had passed.

"Zach, you okay?" Grant asked from where he was standing right in front of me. I had heard him aproach but hadn't bothered to move.

I rolled my neck up and looked at him, "Nothing a whole lot of Tylenol and some sleep wont fix." I told him.

He sat down next to me. "I hear you on that one," He laughed.

"What?" I asked with a half laugh. "Why are you laughing?"

He patted me on the back, "I am laughing, because you my freind, just had one hell of a first date."

* * *

The next morning we had been given the order to pack up and had done it in exacty 16 minutes flat. We could all have second careers in the packing industry.

I was standing in the grand hall when Cammie reached me. "You're already packed," she commented.

I smiled at her, "We've all got baggage," that's what we call medaphors people.

She reached up and touched the bruise on my cheek lightly, "That looks bad."

I shook my head but didn't remove her hand. "It isn't. He-"

"Hits like a girl?" she joked, removing her hand.

I didn't treat it like it was funny though. Instead I looked her over and said, "Not the girls I know." It was true every girl I had ever met could probably give me a run for my money in the ass kicking department.

She apraised me, but for once I didn't feel uncomfortable. I felt warm and vaugely peacful. Eventually Cammie turned and began to walk away. Then I felt something off. Like when you have a long row of magnets and one of them wont stay where you've put it.

"Oh and Cammie," I called.

She turned towards me smiling slightly. Probably expecting another joke or teasing. I wrapped my arms around her and dipped her movie style to kiss her. It wasn't a long kiss. It was light and short but it still sent tingles zinging up and down my entire body.

I stood us both up and smiled. A real smile without holding anything back, "I always finish what I start," It was a promise to me as well. I was going to dig into what had happened to my father, and what my mothers circle was because this semester she could have cost me everything. And I wasn't going to stop digging until I got to the bottom.

I stepped towards the door, when Cammie called, "So this is good-bye?"

"Come on Gallagher Girl," I said winking at her. "What would be the odds of that?"

* * *

**"And that kids, is How I Met Your Mother." Ha ha ha. Just Kiddin. This is the authors note. I was just watching How I Met Your Mother and I thought how weird it would be if Zach tried to tell his kids how he met their mother. Any way this is the end :(. Now I have nothing to write, so send in a book title from this series or a different one and the POV you want it in and I'll do my best. **

**Review!**


End file.
